Does Blog Marketing Work for B2B?

So Microsoft is going after IBM with a $500 million marketing campaign, which apparently doesn’t include a large role for blogs or other “hot” viral marketing tactics? Hmm, go figure:

The campaign began yesterday with eight-page advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other newspapers. The $500 million to be spent over the next year will include ads on television, newspapers, magazines and online, and for Microsoft-sponsored events. Microsoft’s advertising agency is McCann Worldgroup in San Francisco, a unit of McCann Erickson, which is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Microsoft is on the bleeding edge of corporate blogging, with Scobliezer and a myriad of MSDN blogs. (Which costs them pretty much nothing.)

So why do they feel the need to dump half a billion dollars into “traditional advertising”?

Could it be that, despite all the hype, blog marketing for is not quite ready to move the mountains of major B2B marketing objectives?

Which is not to say that Microsoft’s $500 million on traditional advertising is going to be well spent — and not that they will have any way of knowing, since most of it is unmeasurable “brand” advertising.

It would be great if Microsoft COULD pioneer a viral approach to B2B marketing. It’s amazing how little discussion B2B gets in the whole 2.0 marketing revolution discussion. You would think it’s only consumers who have money to spend.

If Web 2.0/social media/etc. want a piece of Microsoft’s $500 million (and other big B2B budgets), it’s going to have grow up a lot faster.