Two of our biggest bugbears are sponsored conversation and lack of transparency in online word of mouth. So it’s good to see social media ethics hitting the news as New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo orders plastic surgery franchise Lifestyle Lift to pay $300,000 penalties and costs for astroturfing – publishing fake positive consumer reviews across the web – as well as intervening in and trying to ban other negative WOM. Hair(line) raising indeed.
This comes on the back of news that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed new guidelines on social media disclosure:
“brands and bloggers both may be held liable should either the FTC or scorned consumers deem that their actions or claims misguided them, or misrepresented the actual performance or efficacy of the product or service in question… the ability for a consumer to exercise better judgment and common sense is indefensible when a glaring absence of disclosure is pervasive”
Brian Solis’s TechCrunch post gives an excellent overview of the state of play so far and chimes with our own belief in the pointlessness and damage of sponsored conversation – although some brands are still trying to leverage paid WOM into every platform possible, such as TNT’s sponsored tweets. It’s also worth keeping an eye on Jeremiah Owyang’s running list of sponsored conversations in social media, a roundup of brands whose ethical policy evidently goes something along the lines of ‘Independence? Emotional engagement? Mutual respect? Meh.’
From Brett Borders’ brief history of social media to Jeremiah’s Owang’s five eras of the social web, the evolution of social technologies is well documented. However, there’s still little examination into how the motivations behind social sharing have changed; and there has in fact been a steep growth in the self-consciousness of our brand-based word of mouth online.
Categorising social media participants as the professionals, the paid, and the plebs has become inadequate. The activity of all three groups is becoming highly diffuse and complex. Online journalists often have a personal blog and other presences unaffiliated to their media mothership; PRs no longer stick to the company blog but tweet and comment on others’ posts too; and as industry players add brands to their consulting portfolio, their case studies and criticisms lose objectivity. The mingling of personal and professional selves is social media’s calling card, and it is making the career conversationalists increasingly difficult to define.
The second tier – ‘paid’ but not ‘professional’ voices – is undergoing the biggest change. In a recent Wall Street Journal article Mark Penn calculated that 1.7 million American bloggers are profiting from their work, with 452,000 of those using it as their primary source of income. Although questioned by some, his numbers carry the startling implication that the ‘independent consumer’ is disappearing under a mountain of advocates-for-hire. Advertising on your blog, or indulging in a spot of pay-per-post, used to be seen as a cash-boosting sideline, but combining different sorts of corporate sponsorship is now becoming a viable career in its own right. Moreover, thousands of people are approaching social media as a personal marketing machine. Although these individuals-as-microbrands may not yet be profiting from the content they share, they are keenly aware that their voice is their currency: what they say and do builds their future value in the social media marketplace.
Even blithely oblivious users are becoming aware that recommending a product might lead to a freebie, or that publicly criticising their employer online could jeopardise their job . Sure, there are innocents out there who still haven’t checked their Facebook privacy settings and who discuss products without a thought for who might be listening, but they’re being offset by the millions approaching social media in a much more self-conscious way.
So where does this leave marketers? Far from making the case for sponsored conversation, the ubiquity of subtly incentivised WOM makes the opinions of independent, passionate individuals and fiercely autonomous communities more vital to both their peers and brands. Clearly, different sorts of word of mouth – brand produced, brand sponsored, and determinedly independent – hold different value, and the distinctions between them need clear articulation. The foundation that underpins the word of mouth marketing industry – the evidence that consumers trust peer to peer conversation above all else when deciding whether to buy into a brand – is predicated on maintaining a clear boundary between advertising-by-any-other-name and unpaid, critically unfettered collaboration.
Our lives have always been forged from conflicting alliances and multiple selves – just look at your average dinner party – but this mixture of uninhibited and self-conscious behaviour gives online ‘transparency’ a whole new meaning. The lines dividing what is authentic and what is not will continue to blur, and brands need a clear understanding of the type of advocacy and relationships in which they want to invest.
When we explain the 1000heads approach – building sustained brand advocacy through experiences not payment, therby preserving the independence and influence of the resulting word of mouth – clients always ask one thing: why on earth would these people want to get involved? If they aren’t paid, what’s in it for them?
The answer is that we offer them something much more valuable than mere cash, like: original, exciting and relevant experiences that tap into their passions; opportunities to showcase and promote their own expertise, creativity and profile; exclusive information and hands-on trials that give them the informed, independent opinions that bring them both followers and kudos; ways to collaborate and bond both witin their own community and with other likeminded global groups; and the chance to actually be heard by and change the brands they use.
Getting young people involved at the BBC Blast Studios – see more in our Flickr set here.
So I was delighted to see a lengthy and highly persuasive article in Ode announcing that:
A growing body of experimental work by behavioral economists proves altruism not only exists but is one of our primary motivations, even in financial affairs. And if some progressive economists have their way, we may be on the cusp of a more humane era in which altruism, not avarice, becomes the trait our economic system nourishes. “It is increasingly obvious that people are motivated by morality; people are motivated by ethics,” says Herbert Gintis, an emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the leading economists studying altruism. “We may be seeing a possible renaissance of economic theory.”
It’s inspirational stuff – read the full post here.
In the concluding part of my trilogy for marketing newsletter Tech Weekly, I tackle the thorny issue of sponsored conversation, pay per post and incentivised WOM, summarising the 1000heads approach that regular readers of this blog will know well: that brand evangelism is earned, not bought. Tastebud-tempting screenshot below, but click through here and register to read the rest for free.
In the concluding part of my trilogy for marketing newsletter Tech Weekly, I tackle the thorny issue of sponsored conversation, pay per post and incentivised WOM, summarising the 1000heads approach that regular readers of this blog will know well: that brand evangelism is earned, not bought. Tastebud-tempting screenshot below, but click through here and register to read the rest for free.
The issue of sponsored conversations (otherwise known as paid content, pay per post and so on) is an intransigent old chestnut – I’ve already posted at length about our own stance here – but that’s because it is central to the integrity, effectiveness and longevity of word of mouth marketing.
Last week, Mark Penn produced some startling statistics in the Wall Street Journal calculating that in America alone 1.7 million bloggers are profiting from their work, with 452,000 of those using it as their primary source of income. Although questioned by some, his numbers carry the worrying implication that the ‘independent consumer’ is disappearing under a mountain of advocates-for-hire.
There are still some vocal supporters of the practice – well known blogger Chris Brogan recently claimed that it was the future of WOM – but his assertion that ‘disclosure is all’ ignores the huge implications involved if brands (and consumers) start retreating from the model of collaboration that has started to really change how corporations and their customers interact, to one of old-school financial power play.
Thankfully many others, including WOMMA, hold to the ethics of independent WOM – and it was heartening to hear the first episode of blogtalkradio’s new podcast series Socializing Media, in which author of The Anatomy of Buzz Emanuel Rosen and social media bigwigs Jonathan Salem Baskin, Blake Cahill, Steve Hershberger and Sean Driscoll agreed that the best and most effective work is ‘the antithesis of sponsored conversation’. The panel asserted that by trading in the currency of appreciation and community empowerment, companies acknowledge that their adovcates must and should have the freedom to be critics as well as fans, but also contract themselves to visibly change in accordance to the resulting feedback rather than simply throwing more money into the space. Listen below.
