Was reading through the blogsphere tonight and came across this story. It's a really great example of companies with absolutely no idea what blogs are all about and how their improper use creates a backlash. The post is pretty long, so I’m not posting the entire thing here, but you really need to read through his entire story to see the work that he did to track down the real owner of the blog.
While the specifics of this story are pretty dumb, how about a general question about blogs. Do you always need to identify a marketing blog as a marketing blog? Is it OK to create fictional characters and have them blog? Your thoughts?
Right. Okay. Got one for ya. You'll like this. Earlier today I wrote a post about my father, who I haven't had any contact with for almost thirty years. It was a difficult post to write - it had taken me almost two weeks to build up the nerve to write it. After I got it out there, however, a number of people commented almost immediately - uniformly pleasant, supportive, decent posts. I'll confess, it was nice. As usual some of them were a little more emotional about the whole thing than I felt comfortable with, but generally the whole thing was a positive experience. I felt positive that I'd got the message out, was hopeful that talking about the experience might make such a process easier for someone else to go through, and felt that I'd said enough for the moment. Everyone's got something out of it. Everyone's happy.
And then I got a comment from a man called Barry Scott. The comment read as follows:
"Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn't seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we'd become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry"
Sounds fine, doesn't it? Except that 'Barry Scott' isn't a real person - he's a marketing vehicle for a brand called Cillit Bang and his weblog is a barely disguised viral marketing platform for the product.
Link: On Cillit Bang and a new low for marketers... (plasticbag.org).
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