I
had an interesting release through yesterday bringing up the ongoing question
over blogger advocacy – should bloggers be paid to write about brands? What’s
to stop them? What are the issues involved?
The
press release came from ASUS (the netbook manufacturer) and immediately stuck
me as both pretty clever and pretty sneaky all at the same time. The company is
basically looking to ‘seed’ bloggers about their new range of netbooks and have
launched a ‘competition’ to get the campaign off the ground. All aspiring
bloggers have to do is have a free netbook from the company and blog about one
of six or seven new netbook models the company is using.
While
we’ve seen this kind of thing backfire before with bloggers feeling swayed by
being ‘given’ free things to write about. But the company is being clever about
this. Firstly it’s looking for grassroots bloggers, not to cajole existing
writers to big-up the brand. Secondly the company has clearly defined that the
initial netbooks are given away free and third that the blogger achieving the
most recognition/readers will win the very netbook they’ve been writing about.
The company has basically introduced the first (that I know of) seeding metrics
– perform and keep, slack and give back (sorry!)
I’ve
blogged about the whole payment thing before and while the truth is these
bloggers aren’t getting ‘paid’ as such, there is still a fair remuneration
happening. However, the do need the netbooks being given out to be able to blog
effectively wherever they are and, the extra encouragement of obtaining an even
better netbook seems a good way of enthusing them to write without overtly
paying them. There’s also nothing saying the bloggers can’t lay-into the
netbooks although, I cant see the company being to happy about giving away
things to someone who’s been slating their products. With the only stipulation
being that they must blog, the question of advocacy isn’t that pressing.
One
important issue though is the problem of getting people to blog about not just
a brand but a single product. New posts for, say, a netbook blog are not
difficult to think up – but surely, there’s only so much you can write about
one netbook…it’s not an MacBook after all.
Overall
ASUS’s idea seems like a good one but not one that’s destined to succeed. The
outlay against possible brand recognition gains is also promising. While I wish
I had the time to apply, I don’t. But I’ll be watching with interest how the
campaign pans out – successful or otherwise.
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