Honesty and Transparency in Social Media
As the web changes the way people communicate, with the rise of blogs, message boards and review sites and the increasing trust that these sources engender, both the EU and the US are moving towards legislation to make marketing more transparent. The fact that they have to do this is a sad indictment on the ethics and morals of certain marketing companies who are keen to take advantage of the Word of Mouth amplification that the web brings without being transparent* about who they are and the fact they are selling products or services.
The UK will enact into law an EU directive at the end of this year. From a Times article earlier this month:
Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.
In December the US FTC also ruled that agencies engaged in word of mouth marketing must disclose their relationships. This one is focused on both virtual and real life situations, such as P&G’s Tremor compnay, which uses brand ambassadors to promote products.
Because the most oft-quoted reason for trying new stuff is from friends (and I extend the meaning of a friend to those you may only have an online relationship with) it is an obvious target for companies to try and get these friends to recommend their product - for money. Mass marketing effectiveness decreases and the social media influence increases, so money shifts.
But doing this cryptically, without being transparent about the relationship, will almost always backfire - it can get found out and tarnish the perception of the brand. It’s understood that many magazines and papers have a relationship with their advertisers, but less expected that your friend, or the bloke you meet down the pub, has a financial relationship so your belief in the message is enhanced without the advertising filter being invoked.
So should a company do this kind of marketing. In my opinion, yes - as long as it is done in a certain way. You can pay people to evangelise your product online or offline as long as you keep the following in mind:
- be open about the relationship. If you are paid WOM marketer, let people know, whether you are doing it on campus face to face or online (ie PayPerPost). If as a blogger you get a freebie to review, make it clear when talking about it. If you are a company employing an agency to market via word of mouth make sure one of the message models you agree is how they will be transparent and explain the relationship.
- Be relevant. Monitor a conversation before joining in. There are some places products should never go near; in others the marketing may be welcome as it adds value to a conversation. Know the areas you are working in
- Be sensitive to the continued tone - and don’t overstay your welcome. Be ready to back out, don’t keep pushing because that is spam
- Know what you are going to do when it goes wrong before it goes wrong. And assume it will at some point. People involved in this are not always dedicated to the brand, working as community advocates as can be done with smaller companies (and tech ones especially) and it is easy to make mistakes. Know how you are going to apologise and react if necessary.
I find the last point quite interesting. Having a dedicated community advocate seems to be the preserve of smaller companies - or the larger tech ones. The FMCG companies I have worked with have not got the point of employing people in the role. WOM is only one aspect of the whole marketing mix and having a person doing outreach full time is not considered cost effective, especially if you are dealing with a commodity product sold by the millions. If they are going to do it, they employ agencies, outsourcing the communications channel as they do with the other ones. This is where mistakes can creep in. I’d love to see some FMCG companies take this on themselves, but don’t think it will become common for many years. Meanwhile, make sure you pick the right agency who will manage the process in an honest and transparent manner.
*I just want to confirm what i mean by transparency as I have been misunderstood occasionally. When talking about marketing transparency, I mean the people, groups or sites doing the marketing are honest that it is being paid for by the product company. I’m not referring to a compnay being transparent in its general business dealings and internal processes. In some cases that can be useful, but that is a completely different post and not what I’m referring to here.
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POSTED IN: Buzz Marketing, Consumer Packaged Goods
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