MediaPost Publications - PayPerPost Orders Bloggers To Reveal Sponsorships - 12/19/2006

We wrote about PayPerPost when it launched (Experience Manifesto: Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8) and they just announced what appears to be a half-hearted attempt to answer all of the criticism they received on their launch. Despite what Mr. Murphy might say, this is not a difficult or tricky scenario. In fact, it’s really pretty simple. If you get paid to say something good about a product, you need to disclose that. That’s what they call advertising. I know I’m sounding like a broken record on these things, but here’s what I wrote only a few weeks back:

One of the things that we’ve said about WOM is that it’s an outcome of doing something well, not a tactic by itself. And one of our biggest issues is that no matter how you cut it, if you’re paying someone — directly or indirectly — to talk up your product, it’s advertising It’s not WOM if it’s been solicited by the company. That’s why so many people were upset about the Edleman/Wal-Mart flog fiasco. Because they weren’t transparent about the fact that the blogs were written by employees of either Wal-Mart or Edelman.

Folks, we can continue to screw around and completely erode every ounce of trust the audience may have in us, or we can start doing things better. But we need to stop playing these bullshit games with the consumer. During our presentations, we constantly challenge the thought that the consumer is in control. To us, this just shows the arrogance of our industry. Folks, the consumer has always been in control. They either bought our products or they didn’t. That’s the very definition of control. However, what they do have today, is a voice. They can blog and post to youtube and they can see through all of our scams. We can either pretend that we care about the consumer with lame policies like the ones being suggested here or we can actually care about the consumer and put real best practices in place. Clearly, if they weren’t worried about how it would impact their business plan, they would insist that bloggers put something on every post indicating that it's a paid post. But this kind of blurry ”Hey, it’s not up to us, what can we do” just don’t cut it.

CONTROVERSIAL BLOG WORD-OF-MOUTH MARKETING COMPANY PayPerPost, which connects bloggers with marketers that are willing to pay for coverage of their products, Monday began requiring its bloggers to disclose the fact that they receive sponsorship money.

But the company is only mandating that bloggers post a general disclosure on their sites, which can consist of a vague acknowledgement that the author may take money that influences his writing. Some industry observers say that bloggers that take payment for posts should reveal far more specific information.

"Ethics is not a game," said Andy Sernovitz, president of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. "It's nice that they're requiring disclosure, but there's still this giant loophole," he said, adding: "It's not clear what's being disclosed."

He also criticized PayPerPost for approving vague boilerplate language that he said "puts the obligation on the reader to find your disclosure policy and guess which posts are honest."

Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost, responded that the new terms of service reflect "best practices" of the word-of-mouth marketing industry and customer feedback. "WOMMA and other organizations do not define the way in which disclosure must be made, because it is simply impossible to envision every scenario where a company or organization and individual may have a relationship," he said. (Emphasis mine)

Murphy added that PayPerPost was looking to provide flexibility with its terms of service, rather than mandating a specific behavior for its bloggers. "If a blogger wants to disclose on a per post basis they are free to do so, and advertisers can request per post disclosure as well," he said. "It is up to the advertiser and blogger to decide what form of disclosure works best for them."

Link: MediaPost Publications - PayPerPost Orders Bloggers To Reveal Sponsorships - 12/19/2006.

Comments

[Michael Stammer]

There seems to be a culture of co-op advertising that has developed in recent years that has become an "I'll endorse you if you'll endorse me" club. Book jackets and forwards are becoming a mutual admiration society - and not always an uncompensated one. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not pooh-poohing honest praise and admiration. But, for example, I just got a request from someone to endorse him with the statement that he has "helped me increase my business by 300% last year." Not only is this just inaccurate, I got the request the day after he went to a three-day seminar on how to market on the web, and... well, I wonder, where did he get the idea? Yea, I like the guy, but something about it just smells funny. (BTW, he also is a "best selling author" because he wrote a chapter in some vanity press book...sniff, sniff... there's that smell again....)

The whole endorsement process gets to be a tricky. What are we supposed to think, for example, of an "award-winning" author published by a company that is essentially a vanity press, which promotes it's own "award" and sells authors their book websites, then makes their real money by producing seminars to get them doing the kind of tit-for-tat described above. (I saw this one just yesterday.)

How do you know if the book's any good? If the audience for it sees behind the curtain - as in the pay-for-post model - doesn't that undermine the whole promotion effort?

When individuals and companies employ these tactics, they erode not only the confidence in their own products but in the overall buying public mindset. Tricky situation, and sad.