From ad:tech - the cash for comment debate
The cash for comment debate has been been around for a while, but has recently fired up as social media emerges to blur old media guidelines.
The main themes of discussion in this debate on deceptive marketing centred around the importance of transparency in marketing messages. Where the line gets blurry is when a commercial message is more entertainment, than it is marketing.
Examples include Nike’s Ronaldinho ads, which were digitally edited, but given they were entertainment, they were not considered as deceptive.
The Witchery example was considered highly deceptive, as the lie was upheld in media interviews with the actress in question.
The most highly criticised example was Kmart’s cash for comment scandal, because of the deception inherent in paying bloggers cash, for their comments. Julian made a great point that information on the exchange of money needs to be published somewhere around any commercial message. It doesn’t need to disrupt the flow of information, it just needs to be available for those that are interested in finding out whether the message is advertising-related or not.
Another example of ‘Twitter whoring’ was John Mayor’s sponsorship by Campbell soup, highly criticised as spam and rejected by most of his followers on Twitter.
As an industry we need to draft rules of engagement to define what is and isn’t acceptable in this space.
One Response to “From ad:tech - the cash for comment debate”
Disclosure is critically important. But John Mayer did give disclosure just prior to executing sponsored Tweets. My issue was that this occurred after users had already opted in. He changed the terms of engagement on his users. And really… does he really need the money?
Twitter is conversational. I doubt it’ll ever motivate a direct sale in a traditional manner. It’s marketing value is in genuine recommendations/referrals (not paid ones!). For marketers, that means connecting with customers to generate positive word of mouth and REAL referrals.
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