Am I Famous Now…

I was surprised today when receiving an email from Hill & Knowlton, the PR agency for LG Electronics Europe (?). Gaylene Ravenscroft has invited me to take part in the LG Shine blogger relations program.

My name is Gaylene, I’m a consultant at Hill & Knowlton, LG Mobile’s communications agency. We’ve recently set up a blog on behalf of LG to support their communications programme for the launch of the Shine phone in the UK¹.

We have been asking a select few bloggers like yourself, with an established interest in technology if they would like to participate (I especially enjoy your honesty and upfront opinions:-).

We can send you a phone to try out. (You’d be under no obligation to write about it afterwards).

Here is a link to an article which may be of some interest, http://techdigest.tv/2007/01/lg_shine_handse.html. You can find out a bit more about our programme on our blog: http://shine.lgbloggers.com/.

You can look up our code of ethics under ‘Blogger Central’. Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Gaylene Ravenscroft

After some Googling I decided to accept the offer, but of course am already opinionated : Why is there no code of ethics?
After the Microsoft and Edelman free-laptops controversy (read my view on this at JOAB) I am surprised to get an invite with a link to a code of ethics but can’t find any code of ethics on that page².
I also am surprised not to discover any conditions about the program. Conditions such as how long is the participation, does LG provide users with a temporary contract with any of the network providers (it is a 3G phone with 2′2″ screen, not every participant might have a 3G contract. No worries here, I have one), what happens to the phone and more.

Anyway I am ready to give the phone a fair chance³ and review it here extensively. And I hope they have built in a good scratch protection on the mirrored screen.

Gaylene,
I’ll test the phone, think you can deal with that? ;-)

Disclaimer : This will be a non-paid review. I am hard to impress. ;-)

¹LG/Hill & Knowlton have already done this for the launch of the LG “Chocolate” KG800 phone. With full disclosure.
² Then again it is LG and not Microsoft, nor is Edelman behind this campaign. Blogosphere A-listers have other values when MS is (not) involved.
³ I once have played with a LG phone before and was happy to throw it away within the first 5 minutes it wasn’t mine. The usability of installed software was zero, zilch, nada, noppes. Pre-installed games sucked, but at least one could call with.