Not too long ago, I was tapped by marketing firm M80 to blog-review “T-Mobile Connected”, a webisode series created to entertain, captivate — and sell some Sidekicks, by the way.

I agreed, and delivered a somewhat(?) snarky writeup that basically equated “Connected” to a toned-down version of “Entourage”. That isn’t necessarily a put-down. If anything, I’d think an comparison with HBO’s hipster-phenom series would be a benefit to the fledgling Web campaign. Besides, I wanted to see how M80 would react to a review that was anything other than a gushing love note, because from past experience, I’ve found that marketing/PR people don’t expect actual critical contributions from the blogosphere — they generally really want nothing deeper than fan endorsements.

I was happy to learn that M80 was happy with my treatment. Maybe the prominent Google search ranking for “t-mobile connected” had something to do with it. But my liason there, Fred, said they appreciated the coverage, and that I’d be getting a prize pack for my troubles.

Today, I got that prize pack: An Amazon shipment of the first-season DVD set of “Entourage”.

Only problem: I already own that DVD set. I bought it when it first came out a couple of years ago.

I’m not put out by it. Frankly, the fact that the prize was so personalized in response to the work “commissioned” tells me that this was a true grassroots/handmade marketing campaign, versus some big-corporate cookiecutter job. So that’s refreshing. And I thanked Fred for the gift. I didn’t tell him about the double-discing, although I suppose he’ll find out soon enough…

I will, of course, be re-gifting this new “Entourage” copy at some point. I think the circumstances and the double-copy situation are covered by the re-gifting rules of play.