Comments on: Who is Tosh Bilowski? Corporate Blogs and Authenticity

By: Amy Gahran

Amy Gahran — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 15:10:45 +0000

Hi Dave

Yeah, you make a good point: Panasonic deserves praise for being willing to try weblogs at all, and I do hope they try it again.

However, I also think they bungled this particular weblog very badly.

If what they wanted was to achieve a personable and engaging online presence, the easiest and best solution would have been to hire a real person to write this blog for them.

There are undoubtedly plenty of qualified, talented, and sufficiently professional writers or video geeks out there who could have done a great job with this weblog. Panasonic missed a big opportunity here, and that’s a shame. This could have been a stellar weblog.

I think they can try again. They can acknowledge that their first approach didn’t work and try a second approach: preferably with a real blogger producing better content. I hope they do, and I will be among the first to congratulate them if so.

I’ll follow up on that more in another followup.

- Amy Gahran

By: Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 03:13:29 +0000

The worst thing here is that it’s just really boring as a weblog. Even his reference to “controversy” doesn’t include links to articles (like this) questioning his existence and legitimacy. So I’d say controversy: 0, boring: 10. On the other hand, my kudos to Panasonic irregardless simply because they’re trying something new. I still believe that it’s possible to create interesting and compelling character blogs. I just haven’t seen it done yet.

By: Amy Gahran

Amy Gahran — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:40:43 +0000

Thanks, Evelyn

Yeah, that sentence raised my eyebrows, too – but it’s not exactly what I would consider disclosure.

If this is, as it seems to be, a character blog, I’ve gotta ask:

1) Why didn’t they simply hire a real blogger? They obviously had money to spend on this blog. It wouldn’t have been hard to find a good one.

2) Have these people at Panasonic (or their PR/ad firm) ever talked to the people they’re trying to reach with this blog?

3) Didn’t they think anyone would notice?

- Amy Gahran
Editor, Contentious

By: Evelyn Rodriguez

Evelyn Rodriguez — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:23:22 +0000

I took a much closer look at the blog myself. “Tosh” spells out that he is a character in so many ways. For instance: “In search of a more interesting flow of information for my fellow tech-savvy video nuts, I came to be. And my blog was born.”

By: Evelyn Rodriguez

Evelyn Rodriguez — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:09:57 +0000

I love how you dug into this! Seems fishy to me. I have a friend with media background whom just started a character blog. It’s a transparently over the top persona, like Manolo at shoeblogs.com. Transparently being the key word. (I’ll post it next week.) Theater, play – like you say is one thing. But deception, I agree, is quite another.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 18:24:58 +0000

I’m sorry, but every time I see â��Toshpit” I think I am reading “Topshit”

So. Maybe Tosh Bilowski is an anagram? BLOW SHIT IS OK is one possibility …..