Archives - earned media


When earned media isn’t earned, part III (but paid media raises money for charity)

[ image courtesy ]

So after my previous posts about GoViral, they contacted me to ask if I’d consider posting a video from TFL highlighting the dangers of illegal minicabs, in return for payment (based on the same pay per view basis discussed below). As I’ve said before, this is not a brothel, there are no prostitutes here, but then I thought, well, I don’t like the idea of taking money, but then I thought, I wonder if we could we turn a straightforward paid media placement into something a bit more worthwhile.

In the spirit of full disclosure, every view of the below video generates payment. And given the nature of the issue, I would like to use any payment generated to donate to Rape Crisis. And because it’s the season of goodwill, in the spirit of giving, I will also personally match any revenue generated to double the donation to what I think is a very worthy cause.  If you’d also like to support this cause directly, you can donate here. Or you can view the video. Or ideally both.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, though, to think about what a more engaging proposition might be. The aim of the campaign is to generate views & raise awareness of the dangers of illegal minicabs through viewing the film. And so to extend the reach of the TV and Cinema campaign, TFL are also looking at paid-for video placements via the GoViral network. So far so good, a pretty bog standard bought media campaign, which I’m sure will do a fine job. And at 3.5p a view, it’s cheap as chips when you compare the cost per impact against TV & Cinema. So fair enough, as far as it goes. Although it’s worth noting, as Rachel Clarke observes, that at no point do GoViral ask bloggers to actively disclose that the video is a paid-for placement, as the fact that the GoViral player says ‘sponsored’ at the beginning is supposed to do the trick. So compliant but not exactly ethical, one might say.

But imagine this. And obviously please note that TFL aren’t my client, I don’t work for them, don’t know anyone who does work for them, and don’t know what their current plans are for the campaign outside the bought activity. So treat this purely as the rambling mind of a curious bystander, musing on possibilities, not making recommendations.

Imagine that a proportion of the media budget was ringfenced and instead of being used to buy media directly, it was used as an incentive to earn media. For example, instead of paying bloggers as media owners, and paying them for the real estate to host the video player on their blog, what about if bloggers were asked to share the video in return for the paid media equivalent being donated to a relevant charity. A bit like I’ve done here. I wonder if a cash-for-good-cause route would be more likely to earn media than a cash-for-views route? And whether the eventual outcome of greater genuine earned media in terms of positive word of mouth, trust and overall engagement would be greater and more valuable than through paid alone?

I genuinely don’t know the answer to this. Whilst I’d like to think that the incremental effect of the earned route would be more valuable than the equivalent budget invested in incremental direct paid-for media, this might just be a flight of fancy. But I’d love to think it would be true.

In the mean time, let’s try our own experiment and try and raise some money for charity. Let’s make something paid into something much better. Please support this very good cause by donating, or viewing, (or both).

December 13, 2009 in Advertising | Permalink | 1 Comment

When earned media isn’t earned, Part II

[ photo courtesy ]

So my previous post ruffled a few feathers. And Claus at GoViral was kind enough to respond to my questions via email, for which I’m very grateful.

The GoViral video player itself is branded as providing sponsored content, and if you want to get paid, you have to embed the GoViral player, so disclosure box ticked there. But my worries were around the additional activity that GoViral were happy to fund:

There is additional budget available for posting, commenting, tweeting, social bookmarking the videos as well as writing articles, creating a page and uploading the content on other websites so that users can interact and comment on the videos. Let us know if you are keen for any of these options as well.

Blog posts, comments and tweets aren’t controlled by GoViral, and dependent on the publishers (as GoViral calls the bloggers it recruits) to include the relevant disclosure. So my question was whether it was a mandatory part of the agreement between GoViral and its publishers that they were obliged to disclose that these blog posts, comments and tweets had been paid for by the brand in question.

Because, if not, then they’d be breaking the law.

Schedule 11 of The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 states that: “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer” is considered an unfair trading practice (see here for IPA briefing note on the implications of the act for advertisers).

As Rachel Clarke’s Guardian article points out, this is also the case across the EU. And that new FTC regulations in the US went even further

The FTC has approached social media marketing from a different angle to the UK, bringing it all under the updated guidelines about endorsements. The 81-page document carries a lot of information about using celebrities and experts to promote your product. Sprinkled throughout – and taking a lot of space in the introductory commentary – is the digital world of blogging and social networks. This seems to go far further than the EU laws.

There appear to be three main areas of impact:

  • A blogger can be considered an endorser of a product if he is directly paid, if the value of the product/service is “high” (although no guidance given) or if he regularly receives free products for review due to his online influence. This includes people who are part of buzz networks, signing up to receive products for review.

    •  

  • Both bloggers and advertisers are responsible for statements made. A blogger can be held liable for any false claims.

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  • It is the endorser’s responsibility to disclose all relationships, although advertisers have to monitor disclosures and take steps if they are not happening.

Transparency and disclosure are therefore not only considered to be a given by the likes of Forrester when praising the merits of sponsored conversation, they’re mandatory under the law.

I don’t particularly like what the likes of PayPerPost do – and would question the value of sponsored conversation for brands in the first place – but at the very least they make it crystal clear that disclosure is absolutely fundamental:

Mandatory Disclosure

Every sponsored conversation facilitated directly by PayPerPost or through one of our services is required to have disclosure. Bloggers that do not disclose are not permitted to participate in any PayPerPost sponsored conversation and will be removed from our network.

Honesty of Opinion

Bloggers are free to write or say whatever they want. PayPerPost has no restrictions on how bloggers express their genuine thoughts on an advertiser’s product or service. PayPerPost will neither withhold payment based on a negative conversation, nor do we allow advertisers to force bloggers to edit their post to remove critical statements, ever.

Claus was kind enough to answer my questions, and the below is copied from his email (NB please also note that I advised that I wanted to publish his answers on the blog, and that I preferred to use his own words so that I did not misrepresent him, therefore he was fully aware that I wanted to make this correspondence public before responding):

At the end of the day though I guess it is also up to the publishers as we don’t control their sites they do. We can flag it in the player, but they decide how to implement content on their sites… I don’t think there is such a mandatory actually, not sure of the legalities to be honest. We flag it in the player so don’t know if that would be required as well. I am not a legal expert

To his credit, Claus also admitted that “it does makes sense to make it clear in the T&Cs that publishers has responsibility flagging it” and that he had advised the GoViral publishing department to look at changing their T&Cs to include this. He has stated they “want to act within the law of course and are of course also happy to disclose that it’s sponsored content”, and that whilst the “2008 act has been considered in relation to the “sponsored by” on the player that is not to say that what we do is exhaustive, there might be room for improvement.”

Props to GoViral for admitting that things could be improved, and I appreciate that they’re looking into changing their T&Cs. And it doesn’t appear that the non disclosure is wilful. But it’s not as though these are nice-to-have ethics, it’s fundamentally about legal compliance as much as doing the right thing. And as it currently stands, if GoViral publishers are blogging, commenting and tweeting about Stella Artois without disclosing that they’re being paid, it would appear to my non-legal expert mind that according to the aforementioned consumer protection act, Stella would be breaking the law (however if brighter legal eagles than I can advise if I’m misinterpreting the regulations, I’d be hugely grateful).

It worries me that as marketing departments are frantically trying to work out what their ‘social media strategy’ is, and as many struggle with the contrast between the slow-build, non-guaranteed world of earned media vs the quick-build, guaranteed-reach world of paid media, that the temptation to go for the easy route of pay per post will be strongly appealing. And whilst I would always strongly advise my clients against the sponsored conversation route, if brands do decide to go down this route, as long as they’re looking at full disclosure, then it’s at the very least compliant and broadly ‘ethical’.

But it’s far from inconceivable that the more quick fixes that are sought, the more non-compliant, unethical posts, comments & tweets that may slip through the net (whether knowingly or otherwise).

Ciaran pointed out at last night’s IAB debate, paid media is paid, and earned is earned, and you can’t confuse the two. I’d like to think that’s true, but I suspect it’s more than you shouldn’t confuse the two, not that you can’t…

December 8, 2009 in Advertising | Permalink | 1 Comment

Liar Liar, Pants on Fire (Or When Earned Media isn’t Earned)

So yesterday I saw some brilliant talks at the APG Battle of Big Thinking (highlights included Justin Basini’s Escaping the Matrix – some brilliant thoughts about conservation economics, fantastic turns from John, Jeremy & Amelia, plus a thoroughly worthy winner in my category in the fantastic James Mitchell). For anyone interested, my deck is up on slideshare, (although the eagle eyed will notice more than a little crossover with my Social Media 09 presentation).

The winner in the ‘Big Thinking in the Free Space’ was Claus Moseholm, the founder of GoViral, a “branded content distribution company”, who argued that nothing is truly free, but that the value of earned media was huge in comparison to bought media.

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this. At Naked we’ve spent many years working with clients to understand how to get the most out of their owned spaces (every brand touchpoint, from product to packaging, not just their owned ‘media’) as well as their bought media, to gain valuable advantage in the earned space. If you’re not familiar with the Bought / Owned / Earned model, I’d strongly recommend this excellent post by Daniel Goodall for a clear and succinct overview. Earned ‘media’ (I think media is a slightly misleading term as it suggests it’s just another media channel, but it’s a well-understood term and I haven’t yet come up with anything better…) is arguably the most valuable as it demonstrates trust in your brand, and that people are truly engaged with you (on their terms). So when you do something that gets positively talked about, discussed, shared and passed on, you know you’ve done something pretty good.

Or have you?

Now, we all know that the best thing for brands is not to have a social media strategy, but just to make really good stuff. Make really fantastic stuff and people will want to talk about it. Amelia and I have both talked about the importance of social ideas. Meg Pickard wrote a fantastic post about means, motive and opportunity in the earned space:

The echo-chamber of social media marketeers spends a lot of time thinking about the Means (ability, access, tools) and Opportunity (social graph, stimulus, habits, behaviours) for people to get involved in or pay attention to social activity online, but not nearly enough time thinking about Motive.

Why do people get excited and talk about stuff?
Because they care about it.
Because it’s good.
Because it’s worth talking about.

I wish product makers and media owners would spend a little less time thinking about manipulating audiences, and a little more time thinking about making good things to begin with.

But we also know that brands are frequently reluctant to rely on the ‘make great stuff and keep their fingers crossed people start talking’ approach. They usually want to try and help things along, and make sure that enough people know about it in the first place, to give them the best shot of generating earned media. And we know that brands have long courted bloggers (and now Twitterers) with ‘social media outreach’ programmes to try and generate valuable earned media. PR is nothing new, and money’s always changed hands in some form, although usually through the exchange of goods and services rather than hard cash, When it’s done openly and honestly with full disclosure, I think it’s all above board – as long as the blogger is under no obligation, as long as they’re free to write what they choose (and not what the brand chooses) and crucially when they admit any involvement. Iain Tait’s completely open about wanting free T-shirts, and those brands who send him a T-shirt know what the score is – and most importantly, so do Iain’s readers.

But what about when the relationship isn’t one of courting and persuasion, of attempting to ‘earn’ through bringing genuine value? What about when the exchange isn’t one of value for mutual benefit? What if the earned media is really no different to bought media?

The CAP code, which regulates all UK non-broadcast marketing communication (excluding online), says that all paid-for editorial content must be strictly labelled as such:

23.1 Advertisement features, announcements or promotions, sometimes referred to as “advertorials”, that are disseminated in exchange for a payment or other reciprocal arrangement should comply with the Code if their content is controlled by the marketers rather than the publishers.

23.2 Marketers and publishers should make clear that advertisement features are advertisements, for example by heading them “advertisement feature”.

L’Oreal got themselves in hot water with the ASA for misleading the public when they failed to disclose that Penelope Cruz’s fantastic-looking lashes weren’t in fact exclusively the result of the mascara they were peddling, but were in fact falsies. L’Oreal now have to disclose to the public that Cheryl Cole’s lustrous locks are actually full and glossy due to the hair extensions she wears, and not just the shampoo she’s advertising – though the type is so minute that although the ad was cleared by the ASA, L’Oreal are still being criticised for misleading the public.

We don’t like being misled. We know that brands want to sell to us. We know that we live in a world of advertising. But we want to know when we’re being sold to.

So I find it utterly disingenuous for Claus Moseholm to extol the virtues of earned media over bought media, when his company misleads people by trying to disguise bought media under the guise of earned.

I got the below email from GoViral earlier this week, offering to pay me cold hard cash in return for posting a video for one of their clients on my blog – with the possibility to earn more cash for additional blogging, tweeting etc:

 

[ click to see full-size image ]

 

Like many bloggers, I get lots of emails from PR and agency people trying to get me to plug their product or service. Most aren’t personalised in any way, and don’t indicate any reason why they think I’d be interested in their brand, or why it would be something I’d want to write about – they’re normally just very generic mass mailouts. And this was no exception – except that I’d never before received such a blatant attempt to buy my endorsement.

Curious, I emailed back to ask how the whole bought-masquerading-as-earned thing worked. How much did they you pay bloggers? How did they work out how much to pay individuals – did they have a ratecard for an individual post or tweet, or did the amount vary depending on the level of influence of the blogger or site traffic? Did they insist on approving blog posts or tweets first?

And got this response:

 

[ click to see full-size image ]

 

So they have a cost per view budget for the campaign, and will pay me a stonking £300 for 10,000 UK views, and they have extra budget available for pretty much anything I’m willing to do to promote the brand:

We’re considering social media spread, branded twitter pages, anything like that will allow us to grant extra budget to you

According to the GoViral publisher guidelines, if you take their cash, you should “suggest [the video content] to the user using links, suggestions and featuring” and cannot “subject [GoViral content] to hateful or similar brand-damaging metadata, tags or similar” – although you can “feel free to do creative and funny things with the material, show spoofs of it etc”.

Nowhere in the FAQ or T&Cs does it say that you should disclose that you’ve been paid to recommend the content in question. It doesn’t say that publishers can’t disclose this information, and I’d be interested to understand how GoViral would (or do) deal with that.

When bloggers decide to feature advertising on their blogs, the banners or text ads are clearly marked as ads. What GoViral proposed is plain and simple bought media, pretending to be earned.

Are these blog posts and tweets genuine praise for the music video in question, or are they simply paid-for placements in disguise?

I don’t have a huge problem with the business model – I personally wouldn’t do it, and I don’t like the idea of blogging or tweeting to order, but I know it happens. If bloggers want to make money by writing about brands in return for money, fair enough I guess, as long as they disclose that they’re being paid (although as my good friend Tom writes, this is not a brothel: there are no prostitutes here). What I object to is how dishonest it is. There’s no way of distinguishing genuine earned conversations from paid-for ones. It’s totally deceitful. It’s exactly why people think marketers are a bunch of immoral cocks.

So I’m sorry Claus, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t sing the praises of earned media over bought, whilst at the same time making profit out of bought media pretending to be earned. There’s a distinct smell of burning underwear, and frankly, it stinks.

[ PS: if this negativity is all too much, check out the inspirational (and awesomely-naked Duke Stump on Bonfire Brands ]

November 27, 2009 in Advertising | Permalink | 25 Comments