BrandSouthAfrica.com

A group of top American bloggers will be arriving in South Africa at the end of November to create what the International Marketing Council of SA (IMC) hopes will be some highly entertaining and informative web content – words, pictures, audio and video - about the country.

According to Simon Barber, US country manager for the IMC and the main mover behind the initiative, the Brand South Africa Bloggers' Tour 2008 will get under way on 30 November and run through 8 December.

Writing on the Mail & Guardian blog Thought Leader, Barber said the idea behind the tour was to "have a dozen smart, creative and credible people record their impressions of the country in real time and, with the help of wireless G3 modems generously supplied by Vodacom, get these impressions distributed to as many eyeballs as quickly and stickily as possible, via the ganglia of the internet."

The bloggers' itinerary

The itinerary, put together by South African science writer, author and blogger Graeme Addison, will take the group of bloggers aboard a giant De Beers mining ship off the Cape west coast, and down Anglogold Ashanti's Tau Tona, the world's deepest gold mine.

They will visit Cape Town-based Optimal Energy to see the Joule, the locally developed electric car that made its debut at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, and go into the kloofs (canyons) of the Magaliesberg mountains in North West province with an innovative programme that rescues troubled youngsters.

"The group will be overnighting in Soweto, learning about efforts to restore the lost languages of the San, visiting Square Kilometre Array facilities, getting briefed on the economy at the JSE, meeting local bloggers - including the geniuses behind Stormhoek winery's web-based marketing triumph - and more," writes Barber.

The bloggers' tour lineup

The Brand South Africa Bloggers' Tour 2008 lineup includes Eliane Fioret, whose ubergizmo.com reviews gadgets in six languages and has an enormous following, ranking 22nd among 93-million blogs by Nielsen's Blogpulse. The full lineup is as follows

• Renee Blodgett and Ray Lewis - down the avenue
• Zadi Diaz - ZadiDiaz.com
• Mona Gable - The Huffington Post
• John Gartner - Matter Network
• Chris Morrison - VentureBeat
• David Sasaki - Global Voices Online
• Eliane Fioret - Ubergizmo
• Graeme Wood - The American Scene, The Smart Set, TheAtlantic.com

Joining the tour will be two of South Africa's best bloggers: Thought Leader's Ndumiso Ngcobo, author of Some of My Best Friends Are White, and Nick Haralambous of South Africa Rocks.

The bloggers' South Africa posts will appear individually on their own blogs and collectively on We Blog The World. There will be a flickr feed of pictures taken on the trip, and a zoopy.com channel for video is also on the cards.

Barber, one of the voices behind the Brand South Africa Blog, will also be following the action closely. "I, for one, cannot wait to see a YouTube video of Zadi reporting from the bottom of Tau Tona," he says.

The thinking behind the tour

In his Thought Leader entry, Barber explains the thinking behind the bloggers' tour: "The IMC is in the business of promoting South Africa as a destination for investment and travel and as a source of innovation and high-quality goods and services.

"The IMC calls itself the custodian of Brand South Africa - but not, mind, the owner. Today, the owner of any brand is the consumer. Thanks to the internet and the blogosphere, the consumer now wields more power than ever before in history.

"The web is playing an ever-expanding role in helping people decide how to spend their money – from which gizmo to buy to where to go on holiday and where to stay when you get there, to which company or country to invest in.

"And it isn't the purveyors of the goods and services who are closing sales with their pitches and come-ons," says Barber. "It's the recommendations of other consumers and investors.

"Slick advertising still has a role in getting people to talk about your product, but it is ultimately the stories consumers tell each other, and themselves, that will determine how many sales you make.

"That is the reason the IMC launched the Brand South Africa Blog: to scour the internet for the good things other people are saying quite independently about South Africa and package them in a way, hopefully amusing, that draws visitors and inbound links from other sites.

"The next step is to begin offering incentives – prizes, exposure, contracts even – to encourage a greater flow of visitor contributions: stories, YouTubes, designs for brand-supportive tee-shirts, even ideas for ad campaigns.

"What could be more fitting than to crowdsource the marketing of a country from its own citizens and international fan base?"