April 2, 2005
conflict of interest
Tris, you made a few good points about Gourmet Station Blog, which I, for good or ill named as this week’s winner of “The Beyond Lame Award”.
Now that I know more about the story behind GSB, my attitude has softened. This is due in no small part to the President of GSB personally leaving a remark in my comments section (You see what a little honest conversation can do? CEO’s, take note.).
But let’s face it, using stock photography of posed, fake, happy, smiling yuppies ANYWHERE near the blogopshere is just asking for trouble.
Frankly, it just screams “pretentious”. And “pretentious” doesn’t get you the benefit of the doubt in the Blogopshere. It gets you “Beyond Lame Awards”, as GSB found out. Harsh but true.
Whatever. I’m sure GSB is a good company with a great product run by nice people, even if their blogging prowess could use a refresher course. I sincerely wish them well.
But there’s a bigger issue, which affects anybody trying to make a living in the ad business, to greater or lesser degrees.
The bigger issue is that a lot of people and businesses are now entrusting advertising agencies to build their blogs for them. If your blog building is currently entrusted to an ad agency, I’d be REALLY careful, and REALLY ruthless with them.
The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they’re cheap and they’re easy. Frankly, they’re in the business of selling you stuff that is neither.
They also hate blogs because blogging rewards authenticity and punishes insincerity, whereas the ad agency business model does EXACTLY the opposite.
Blogs have a fundemental conflict of interest with the economics and ethics of running a traditional ad agency, and no slick, Cluetrain-savvy agency pitch is going to change that.
Seems to me GSB got caught in the crossfire.
»The fact is, ad agencies hate blogs. They utterly despise them, even if they tell you otherwise. They hate them because if done well, they’re cheap and they’re easy. Frankly, they’re in the business of selling you stuff that is neither.
A-men.
»They also hate blogs because blogging rewards authenticity and punishes insincerity, whereas the ad agency business model does EXACTLY the opposite.
That goes double for this.
Of course, my dream is that the transparency and authenticity demanded by blogging will finally work outward and create change on a massive scale in the offline world. I really believe that the tools of business aren’t inherently evil, although they’re (sadly) frequently employed in the service of it.
Yay, Hugh. May you bring together many smart patrons and beautiful suits.
Hello Hugh,
I agree. “Seems to me GSB got caught in the crossfire.”
I also agree with many of your points as to how some tactics are ripe for criticism in the business blogging world. Know your environment. Know your audiences.
Thanks for getting into the discussion. I enjoyed it. Always get a kick from the toons, too.
All the best.
Robert
The great thing about authenticity is that once it catches on, it’s pretty easy to fake.
I’d love to believe that blogging is going to make the world a happier, greener, sweeter, nicer, more playful, niftier, more joyful, friendlier, transparent place. I think that there’s way to little of all that great stuff. And, right now, the ease of use of blogs really does remove a number of barriers that have kept interested and passionate people from getting their voices heard in the past.
But…
What can be discovered by early adopters, embraced by passionate believers, done well by hobbyists and civilians… can be crafted to a diamond sharp point by professionals.
Have they got it right yet? Nope. It’s still too new. Same thing with the web back in the mid 90’s. Agencies were fumbling around and trying to treat it like a cross between TV, a weird ATM and a remote control. And, if you’ll remember, lots of us hip techno trolls back then were stroking our beards and going on about how the “old economy” folks were never going to “get the web.”
Whoops. We were wrong. They did. It just took them awhile to adjust. We shoulda seen it coming. Because the same things happened when TV came in, and before that radio, and before that national magazines. Every time, the folks who had the initial “eureka!” were sure that the Old Guard would pass away. They never do. They eventually catch on, hire some of the Eureka Kids, read a few books and, eventually, get on the bus.
I love Doug Rushkoff. And I especially loved “Media Virus.” And when I got done reading it, I started putting it to work on my own marketing campaigns for the cellular company I then worked for. When his next book, “Coercion,” came out, I was stunned to find out that he was stunned to find out that marketers, like me, had been putting his “Media Virus” work to work for our marketing campaigns. Vot? Oh… Right… We weren’t supposed to “get it.” Viral media and memetics were tools that only people who’d been to raves were allowed to use. Nope. See GM’s “Saturn” campaign.
So. Do I love blogs? You bet. Do I love that they can disintermediate an entire class of journalists and media wonks who ordinarily provide nothing but an obfuscating film between the original content and the reader? Yes. Do I think blogs are neat? Yes. Do I hate blogs that are smarmy and badly done and are clearly trying to take advantage of that “new medium smell” in order to get attention? Yes. Do I think that there are a bunch of blogs that should stop blogging because their content is clearly ads and not blogerrific? Yes.
But are blogs going to teach the world to sing? No. Are they going to end poverty? No. And are ad agencies going to figure out the right way to help their clients use blogs appropriately as part of a good, solid marketing mix? You bet. How do I know?
I’m already doing it with my clients.
You can’t really fake authenticity. I was kidding about that. But you can certainly plan to be authentic and put some thought behind when, where and how to do it well. You can choose what subjects to blog on. You can educate people on how to find subjects. And you can steer people away from cheesy clip photography.
Blogs are a great medium. And in America, all great media will eventually be used for marketing. C’est la vie. C’est la guerre.
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“done well by hobbyists and civilians… can be crafted to a diamond sharp point by professionals.”
Yeah, just like those professional advertisers present women and minorities and gay and lesbian people in commercials. Those talented professionals who show me, an educated woman, that I’d be happier scrubbing my bathroom until it gleams. I can’t wait to see how they represent my feminist views better than I can. They can craft enough diamonds to refill all the mines in Africa and I still won’t buy what they have to say. Ever.
Yet another post about this subject after I’ve already written two responses…that’s what I get for reading from the bottom up.
Glad you softened your stand, Hugh, but let’s go back to the original central issue. It wasn’t the pictures that people pointed to as “lame,” but the fact that the blogger was “fake.” As I said in my first post to the original thread, I haven’t read the chef blog, so I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I DO know that AUTHENTIC (which I agree with you is necessary) doesn’t necessarily mean REAL.
Those are not REAL people in your gags…they are symbols of real people. Yet despite your very unrealistic drawing style, your comics have an extremely authentic voice, which is why they are so good and so liked. In fact, if you used photographs of real people, the gags would lose a lot of punch and effectiveness!
Then, too, I have read many blogs by “real” people who write in a very INauthentic voice.
So I stand by what I’ve said. Forcing preconceived notions that bloggers can’t be made up people is not Cluetrain OR Hughtrain and just because a blogger isn’t a real person, the blog shouldn’t automatically qualify for your beyond lame award.
Now your warning about ad agencies: good point!
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Some agencies may hate blogs and by implication in your opinion, truth, but the good ones realize that the winning strategy for consumer recruitment, engagement and long-term commitment comes from dramatizing the most relevant brand truths through a dialogue. That’s why brands and the good agencies like blogs. And, The Captain, although fictitious, is clearly neither fraudulent nor misleading in its blog. It’s clearly character-based and personally, I’ve found it entertaining. If truth entertains is it a lesser truth?
Cheers!
“S”,
Nice job remaining semi-anonymous, if not totally anonymous. Yeah, I used to work in advertising too. I know all about fear and paranoia.
Who are these good ad agencies that you speak of? Name some names if you feel so confident in your opinion.
Tell me of the great work that they’re doing, on behalf of their clients. I would like to see it.
Here’s a story. The Chief Marketing Officer of a very, very good, very famous US agency told me last week, “Our good ideas no longer come from the copywriters. They’re coming from the web geeks, the hackers and the techies.”
Hope you’re not a copywriter.
Ghost Blogging and Pseudo Blogs by Fictitious Entities S-U-C-K.
I still don’t get why the CEO or other spokesperson can’t be the authentic voice of the GS blog.
That TA character is a bad, a very bad, idea.
Just my astute opinion.
I was a direct marketing copywriter for years, including work at Grey Advertising in NYC.
Luckily, I never in my career was asked to create a fake anything.
Fictional characters who “blog” are Beyond Ridiculous.
A non-entity is discussing non-events involving make believe family and pretend friends, to communicate a brand, a product, a company?
You’ve got to be bullshitting me.
Too funny. I read your original post, Hugh, then trotted over to take a peek at Gourmetstation.
Blown away by the inauthenticity, I wrote a little post of my own in which I said that, for me, the whole thing going on over at GS was a little smarmy and off-putting.
The next day, I was surprised and pleased to find that Donna Lynes-Miller posted a nice comment to explain the whole thing and thank me for my feedback.
And today, I’m annoyed to find that her comment to me is the same comment, verbatim, that she left for you. I wonder how many other bloggers got the same exact thing?
Maybe I’m a little bitchy, but wouldn’t one think she might have taken a moment to write something a bit more directed to the source, rather than a canned response? Or did a fictitious character (or employee) write her comments for her?
Blogging policies and guidelines
Following a collaborative effort by existing bloggers in our company, we’ve just had our guidelines for personal weblogs approved and published to all our staff. I’m reproducing the key extracts here for the reference of others.