26 May
2009
DVPR President Stephanie Smirnov's (aka PRMAMA)
recent post sums up an issue that has been lurking in the background until the recent FTC proposal that
I discussed earlier on this blog brought it to
Business Week and beyond. The issue is blogger compesation and what is possible, ethical and correct in this new publishing paradigm we are living in. AS ALWAYS the magic is in the comments and her post has quite a few nuggets in there - so please check it out and let us know what you think!
Here is a excerpt from
her post.
In the wake of the FTC announcement, some of our clients are anxiously wondering if they should change the way they’ve been dealing with bloggers. If you’re in PR, I’m sure you’re having the same conversations with your clients and marketing colleagues. So I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and was eager to hear what some of the leading voices in the mom blogosphere had to say during a Twitter chat last week on bloggers and brand representation.
...There is sentiment in many corners that bloggers deserve compensation for what they do. I was interested to hear some bloggers describe what they offer on their sites as “advertorial” in nature, thereby casting themselves in the role not of content editor, but publisher. In other words, akin to the business-building side of the classic magazine church/state divide.
Which is sticky, because we PR types have helped our clients “get” bloggers by equating them with editorial influencers. In which these rules apply: marketer provides gratis product, editor tries, editor may or may not write about it favorably. No money changes hands. So the editorial game is high risk/high reward – you can’t control the outcome, which is why PR will always be several parts art (vs science) – but the potential value of unpaid editorial endorsement far outweighs the risk that an editor will slam your product after trying it.
Here’s where blogging gums up the works. “Publisher” vs “editor” distinctions don’t apply anymore. The blogger role is actually a new publishing paradigm. They wear multiple hats: selling advertising space, marketing themselves and their blog(s), creating promotional partnerships with brands, publishing content – but (here’s the gummy part) they are also the ones writing that content. And in some cases, that content involves road-testing and endorsing products. But unlike the magazine world, the blogosphere has no guidelines establishing the boundaries between publishing and editorial — indeed, publishing and editing seem to have merged and no one’s quite sure how to assign a monetary value to the blogger’s output.
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