Truth and Lies in Blog Advertising
Fortune Magazine features a well written article by
David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth about the influence of Blogs.
Or as they summarize it on the web site:
10 TECH TRENDS
Why There's No Escaping the Blog
Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1011763,00.html
This article outlines how Mazda posted a blog from a fictional 22 year old hipster, with videos of Mazda cars doing stunts that occasionally became crashes.
But the savvy blog readers figured out that the videos were too slickly produced to be amateur, and Mazda eventually admitted that the blog was a corporate creation. The 22 year old "author" was probably a team of ad guys who dreamed up the whole blog.
I think blogs can be used for advertising or PR or promotion, but you have to be honest with your readers. The Mazda fiasco just proves that hiding behind a fictional advertising character isn't going to work, because readers feel deceived.
Nike, did a much better job with their marketing blog because they were honest about what they were doing. They commissioned several filmmakers to interpret the idea of speed and just presented the blog as entertainment. This is simple and direct compared to the Mazda approach.
Ken Burkardt nailed this point when he pointed out that consumers will trust each other about whether a product or brand is reliable. Professor Ken Burkardt is Marketing Dept Chairman at Georgia State University's College of Business. "The real issue is that blogs are word of mouth generated from consumer to consumer," said Bernhardt. When customers tell each other that a brand or product is dishonest or unreliable the word spreads quickly because of the credibility that blogs have.
David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth about the influence of Blogs.
Or as they summarize it on the web site:
10 TECH TRENDS
Why There's No Escaping the Blog
Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1011763,00.html
This article outlines how Mazda posted a blog from a fictional 22 year old hipster, with videos of Mazda cars doing stunts that occasionally became crashes.
But the savvy blog readers figured out that the videos were too slickly produced to be amateur, and Mazda eventually admitted that the blog was a corporate creation. The 22 year old "author" was probably a team of ad guys who dreamed up the whole blog.
I think blogs can be used for advertising or PR or promotion, but you have to be honest with your readers. The Mazda fiasco just proves that hiding behind a fictional advertising character isn't going to work, because readers feel deceived.
Nike, did a much better job with their marketing blog because they were honest about what they were doing. They commissioned several filmmakers to interpret the idea of speed and just presented the blog as entertainment. This is simple and direct compared to the Mazda approach.
Ken Burkardt nailed this point when he pointed out that consumers will trust each other about whether a product or brand is reliable. Professor Ken Burkardt is Marketing Dept Chairman at Georgia State University's College of Business. "The real issue is that blogs are word of mouth generated from consumer to consumer," said Bernhardt. When customers tell each other that a brand or product is dishonest or unreliable the word spreads quickly because of the credibility that blogs have.
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