They do read the comments (cf my comment on a picture of a book in Swedish when lobbying Finnish literature…….. lol), but I’m not sure if anyone behind the scene understands Finnish. Very tempting indeed !

MEK is strongly behind the film Ruokala Lokki, too. The one that is hoorayed in Japan and is pretty much ok as a film too (there is a story, characters etc) I wouldn’t wonder if they now have the newest strategy of sliding into popular culture like film and web and pushing some Suomi-info that way. Ok it might work out there, but in the eyes of Finns a lot of their work looks soooooo fake and pathetic.

Like the Anna’s blog.

The blog is mainly ass stupid. I read French and all I’d like to do is to write her nasty comments in Finnish. But as probably nobody even reads the comments, should I bother?

I have a screaming example of a fake Finnish blogger in Paris : a blonde called Anna blogs about Helsinki and Finland with professional webcasts filmed by a buzz agency ; she pretends to live in Paris although her posts and photos are all from Finland. Does she go there every week ? She also claims she’s only been in France for 3 years and she’s got no accent in her French – ha. She says “vous” (teitittely) to the Finns she meets in her webcasts and does not speak a word of Finnish… apart from a vague “moi”.

Behind the blog, the Finnish tourist board MEK with a competition to win a trip to Finland etc. Oh well, I tried my chance – it would only be fair since I am The Finnish Blogger in Paris… since 1994 ! In the meantime she’s added me to her blogroll to be more credible. Bloggers always have blogger friends eh ?! I’ve commented her’s (eg about showing a book in Swedish when speaking about Finnish literature) but she’s never left a single comment on mine.

http://www.briserlaglace.com/

You can find the Picnic-logo on the page and the video also makes it clear that the site is a Picnic-ad. Plus words like “ad” and “competition” in the header and the navigation send quite clear message too. So I wouldn’t call it a fake blog.

Actually the lack of common features like permalinks, rss, etc. and the too professional photos and silly content make it a more honest advertisement. I wrote a brader comment on my blog (in Finnish), follow my namelink if interested.

But otherwise you made really good points that everyone should take into consideration if they’re starting a real business-to-customer blog