I've received quite a few questions this week about the pros and cons of marketer sponsored blogs, triggered in part by a Monday MediaPost article about a Mazda sponsored blog that generated a negative backlash from the blogger community. Without getting into the specifics of the campaign, there's clearly a right and a wrong way to jump into the blog space. And consumers are driving for more and more transparency from marketers. Back in September, I authored an op-ed in MediaPost about how bloggers are becomming de facto "Copy Cops," in effect "outing" marketers and brands they feel are misrepresenting ad claims, product promises, and beyond. We saw much of this during the recent political campaign, whereby bloggers vocally scrutinized news coverage deemed incomplete. This is the new world we live in!
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