Can The FTC Enforce Honesty As The Best Policy?

from the Truth-Be-Sold dept

The FTC's advertising-practices division is considering an update to ad guidelines that would hold bloggers liable for false or misleading statements, if they are compensated to promote or review a product. The FTC will vote on changes to its guidelines this summer, and the agency says it will review public comments beforehand. But is additional regulation really necessary?

While some ad agencies are worried about the "chilling effect" new regulations might have on nascent viral campaigns, other groups point out that transparency should be at the core of any social media campaign in the first place. And this is concept that should be recognized before any word-of-mouth ad campaign is even started: transparency and authenticity are the keys to a brand's marketing reputation. If a company thinks it can fool consumers with astroturf campaigns, it should really think twice about the potential damage such dishonesty can do. In fact, ultimately, running honest marketing efforts will be much more effective for winning over consumers. So although the threat of new regulations might force some companies to reconsider their sneaky viral ads plans, the more realistic penalty for disingenuous ads is the loss of trust from valued customers.

Assuming, though, that additional gov't regulations are actually instituted -- holding bloggers liable will not necessarily solve the "problem" of paid blog reviews. Presumably, the objection to paid reviews is that such content misleads consumers and that companies behind the fabricated opinions are free to create as much false info as they want. However, if the liability for this unsavory behavior is laid at the feet of bloggers, then the blame is shifted from the company (that is more justly at fault) to a possible multitude of bloggers. An evil corporation bent on promoting misinformation would love to spread the liability around, since the legal burden would be on individual bloggers. The unintended consequence might be that even more dishonest ad campaigns are encouraged since the liability does not lie with the corporations backing them.

So before the FTC begins regulating blog posts, some thought to the ramifications will hopefully be brought up. The goal of protecting consumers may be a noble one, but the side effects of bad regulations could potentially make things worse.

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Brands Still Struggling To Find That Viral Magic Sauce

from the you-mean-it's-not-that-easy? dept

Viral marketing continues to vex plenty of big brands who don't seem to understand that merely having a "viral" campaign (or just saying your campaign is viral) won't make it successful. The WSJ has a nice post on one recent viral miss from Trident gum for a new product that is supposed to strengthen and rebuild teeth. The campaign involved fake web videos being exposed as fake on a fake TV show -- a concept which sounds much more confusing than compelling. But perhaps the problem is that the company and its marketers went into the exercise set on creating a viral campaign, and treated it as such, even trying to seed it by sending emails to dental hygienists and posting in online dental forums. Compare that to the comments from the creator of some of Burger King's successful viral campaigns, like the Subservient Chicken: "People go into brainstorming viral, and you can’t go into it with that intention. What you can go into it with, though, is the idea of making a great ad. If you do make a great ad, people will talk about it. The viral part will sort of be a consequence." Marketers have to understand that, perhaps even more so than in other types of ads, the content of viral campaigns has to be able to stand on its own as content. The focus has to be on making great content; if the content sucks, all the viral intentions in the world won't help.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Man Sues Former Employer For Not Updating Whois... And Then Acting Stupid

from the blame-game dept

Eric Goldman has the details on a fascinating case involving a guy suing his former employer for failing to update the whois info on their domain names (which used his names as the contact) and then pulling a bogus astroturfing marketing stunt that people started blaming him for organizing. Greg Meyerkord worked for Zipatoni, a "promotional marketing company." While there, he was the contact name on their domain registrations. He stopped working for Zipatoni in 2003. However, in 2006 Zipatoni was the company behind the disastrously stupid "fake" viral marketing campaign known as All I Want For Xmas is a PSP. After that was exposed, blogs went to town making fun of Sony... and Zipatoni. As part of that, people went to the whois and "outed" Meyerkord, including calling him a "douchebag."

Because of this, Meyerkord is suing Zipatoni, claiming a privacy violation. A lower court rejected this argument, but an appeals court has sent it back, saying there could be an issue if Zipatoni acted with "malice." That's probably going to be difficult, so the case may not be going anywhere. Goldman notes that it's pretty ridiculous that Zipatoni left the incorrect whois on the domain for so long, but it's not that surprising to me. With many registrars, it's pretty much a "set it and forget it" type of operation, where there's little need to ever review or change the info.

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UK Band Admits It's 'Utterly Dependent' On Piracy

from the except-they-call-it-viral-promotion dept

At some point, it won't make sense to post these sorts of examples any more because it will just be common sense that bands can and do benefit from so-called "piracy," but every time we post one of these stories, we get people complaining that this couldn't possibly work for others. When a band is big, then it will never work for small artists. When they're small, it'll never work for big artists. Once we even had a commenter complain that it might work for big artists or small artists -- but it was the all important artists in the middle that it would never work for.

So, here we go again, with yet another example of a band that isn't worried about piracy. It's an award-winning acoustic folk duo out of the UK, called Show of Hands, where one of the members admits that one of the most popular ways that people find out about the band is when others share the band's music, and this often drives them to come out to shows and buy CDs as well. The band points out that "piracy" is a bad description of what happens:

You may call this process 'piracy' if you wish - for me it is an act of generosity and it both increases our audience size and record sales. And as I always say on the night - if you're going to do it anyway you may as well feel good about it! I believe the official term is 'viral marketing', and we depend utterly upon it.

Yet, if he listened to the RIAA or the IFPI, apparently, all this viral marketing that the band depends on would be "no different than common theft."

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