This is one of the stories that bloggers have been talking about the past few days and I've been catching up on all of the threads tonight. There's also been some discussions about the Nikon D80 blogger give away (full disclosure, I wasn't one of the blogger who received a D80 and I'm pretty bummed about it! Damn, what do I need to do to get on these lists???) and how it should be played in the blogosphere. But these kind of stories continue to raise issues about the rules and working of blogs and how, if at all, they should fit into the traditional world of main stream media.
So, let's start with what happened with Deborah Weil and the alliConnect blog. It seems that they weren't getting enough comments on the site and Debbie Weil was hired by GSK (more disclosure, we've worked with GSK in the past and I'm kinda' bummed they didn't call us about this!) to help boost the conversation. So, here's what Debbie sent out to bloggers show knew:
Hi everyone,
This is a shameless request. I'm working with GlaxoSmithKline on the official corporate blog for alli, the first FDA-approved, OTC weight loss product. You may have seen the TV ads.
While traffic to the blog is growing, readers seem shy about leaving Comments.
You can help jump start the two-way conversation! Take a peek at the blog at http://www.alliconnect.com.
If you're inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need to say that you know me, of course. (Emphasis mine, DBP)
It really is kind of neat that a Global 100 company is doing a blog like this. It's not easy.
Now, I send out stories from our blog to other bloggers to both increase the conversation and increase traffic, so that by itself is not really all that unusual. But, there are two things that do make it a little unusual.
- Asking people to post comments on a client blog, especially when they may or may not have any relation to the product. So, when I send out something to fellow bloggers, I know that their POV will be of interest to my readers. And I do really want a conversation, so whether or not people agree with me is not as important to me as having a good dialogue. But, unless I'm trying to lose weight or I'm using Alli, then what's my credibility to comment on the blog? And what's the value of comments when they have no value to the blog? I have to turn on comment authentication every few months just to stop blog spam. Wasn't Debbie in fact, inviting blog spam?
- But the thing that seemed to get people really upset was when she said No need to say that you know me, of course. I don't understand why Debbie would've even mentioned that, it just creates the wrong perception of what she was trying to do.
Debbie posts her side of the story here, but I think she's missed the two important above. It's OK to send a note saying Hey, take a look at what I've written and post your thoughts, but that's not really what she asked people to do. She didn't ask fellow bloggers to critique the blog and give her ideas for improvement. She asked people to post comments on the blog as if they were actually commenting on the effectiveness of Alli.
With Nikon, they gave the D80 to a bunch of bloggers and really didn't ask them to do anything is return. They were clearly hoping to get bloggers to do posts both about the camera and with the camera. You may remember that Microsoft faced some controversy earlier this year when they sent some high end laptops loaded with Vista to blogger to get them to write about Vista.
As with the Alli blog above, the issue always seems to come back to transparency. If you disclose that you've received the product for review and then you review it, hey, that's OK. It's only when you don't disclose the potential relationship that trouble can start. On the other hand, brands have used celebrity spokespeople for years and most times we didn’t believe they actually used the product. Is it OK for bloggers to do the same thing?
But, to stir the pot just a little, there's an interesting thing happening in the blogosphere. There seems to be a fluid set of rules and, many people saying there shouldn't be rules at all. Hey, it's the internet, man! But let me ask this question -- what's so new about blogs? Is it just that they're instant and global? Is there really something fundamentally different that blogs do then what was available PB (pre-blog)?
We like to talk about how much better we are then MSM, but we don't want to have to play by their rules and that's not really fair, is it? If MSM have rules about how they handle review samples, then why don't they apply to bloggers as well? If disclosure is necessary for MSM, then shouldn't it be required of bloggers? Why do we need a new set of rules just because we're bloggers?
Now, I never seem to be able to get people to comment here no matter what I do, so let's see if this post gets some dialogue going. Should there be a different set of rules for bloggers and MSM? What's the real role of transparency in media? And what about Naomi? Extra points if you know where that reference is from!
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Link: BlogWrite for CEOs: Using the backchannel of email to invite Comments on your blog.
Link: Jaffe Juice: Bloggers v Bloggers (your comments welcome).
Link: Blogging: Who Makes Up the Rules?.