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As one of the several individuals who were engaged in a public shouting match about the impropriety of setting up bloggers as shills for products, I read with some amusement Robin Good's recent piece on the Marqui deal, which Marc Canter set up to do just that.
Robin Good[from Paid Assignment Is Here: Marqui Ignites "Bloggers Paid To Blog" Initiative ]The opportunity to verify whether me, Marc Canter and those few others are really out of our minds is becoming areality.
[...]
The idea of paying bloggers is a controversial one, as it challenges some of the sacred cows of the journalistic publishing business.
[...]I am personally enthusiastic about this now official announcement and while I don't know if I will be selected as a possible contributor to this I felt compelled to republish here the key parts of this historical opportunity.
Marqui, with the help of Marc Canter has published both an exhaustive and fascinating FAQ as well as the Terms of Contract for this revolutionary involvement of bloggers in the creation of new conversations around products and services.
Bloggers are not paid by Marqui to write good things about their products, but simply to write and report freely about their own views on them.
I think that if you read closely the following excerpts from Marqui's blogosphere initiative official FAQ and to the key parts I have extracted from the official contractual terms you can better appreciate the unique ethical spirit of this effort and why some of us think this is really going to rock.
There is something interesting in here, but it is interesting in the same way product placements in TV or movies are: when Matt Damon is swilling down a Hieneken, you always wonder if it is being paid for, or is it just random.
Now, when you are reading some shill blogger of the future, will you have to read the dozens of potentially complex and conflicting provisos and disclosures in order to determine whether the blogger is saying something for cash or not?
This treads on the other side of a line that I think shouldn't be crossed, and I think that readers will stay away in droves.
Note that we are experimenting with some novel sponsorship relationships at Corante, such as the Zero Degrees sponsored Operating Manual for Social Tools project. We thought that the relationship between the contributors there and Zero Degrees had to be carefully explained in a disclosure, so we created one. But in that case we are not being paid to mention Zero Degrees, and we have no incentives based on click throughs or sales.
That aspect of the Marqui deal is what unnerves me about it. A blogger (notwithstanding the disclosure of the relationship) writes a sentence about Marqui, or other subsidized products, right in the flow of his/her opining about technology, or communication, or whatever, and gets compensated for each click that leads to a sale. This is basically turning blogs into nothing more than those aggregated websites slapped together by affiliate marketing folks. No offense; they may serve a purpose, and people may find them useful to search for various products, but they are not serving the same purpose as blogs. And candidly I believe that they are less worthy of attention.
So, in the final analysis, the Marqui experiment is not necessarily evil, and I don't think it threatens to revolutionize social media. Its just another proof that companies are willing to pay for clicks or eyeballs, and if some group of people decide to use their blogs as affiliate marketing websites, then we will all have to learn how to differentiate those from other, unaffiliated blogs.
Note: I am not a purist who turns away from ads. On the contrary. But I think there needs to be a clear separation from content and commerce. I don't say good things about Silkroad just because they are sponsoring my blog and the True Voice seminar series. Their ad occupies the upper right rectangle on the blog, and by all means, click through sometime and see what they have to offer. And if they don't get enough traffic, I am sure that they will put their ad dollars elsewhere. But I am not being paid to write about Silkblogs once per week. And that distinction, although nuanced, is important.
Stowe, thanks for paying attention to this experiment and for publicly sharing your thoughts on it here.
There are a few items to clarify:
1) The Marqui bloggers are not paid for the number of clicks that the ads on the article or the post itself brings to the company. They are paid a $50 bonus for qualified leads on top of $800/month for writing a weekly article (for three months) about Marqui.
2) There is open full disclosure on the selected blogs that the authors are being paid to write about Marqui.
3) You will find, that nonetheless what others are thinking, most of the bloggers will be writing and reviewing the Marqui service/technology as thoroughly and effectively as they normally do.
4) Credibility and reputation in the blogosphere are not built around the fact that a writer may take money from a company to receive greater attention, but by the writer thoroughness and sense of ethics expressed over time.
5) Marqui is essentially buying some of my preferred writing time. They are not buying in any way what I will say or write in my posts about them.
6) If you fear that one like me would be tempted to write good things about the tool in order to get more leads and payback, think again. I am here to do a well done job for my readers, NOT for Marqui. This is the true story.
7) I have chosen Marqui and not the other way around. Whatever they tell you this is really what is happening. No matter what you pay me, you have to have something that I like for me to write about it. Otherwise you can keep your money. No matter how hard this may appear This will also be my growing business and advertising model: selecting the tools and products I want to promote, not because of what they pay me, but because I believe in them. You will see me doing it soon without ever using banner ads or other traditional approaches.
8) Marqui gets a big benefit out of this no matter what I write. If I write about things that need to be improved, Marqui is paying me a tenth of what it would cost them to hire me as a strategic advisor to improve their tool. If I write about the good things I see, the effective promotion that Marqui gets is much more valuable and effective than any traditional advertising campaign.
9) Marqui gets a lot of exposure in all cases, and again, not the kind that you get by packaging some banner ads and peppering them through a few trafficed ad networks. Here there are people talking about Marqui since this very page, at a price for the coverage and exposure received that is unbeatable.
10) The audience will vote with their actions. I will be happy to grant you permission to post here on your site my traffic charts covering the month before my Marqui engagement and the progression during the three months of this assignment. Data will talk.
11) At last, I am here to try. I think I have shown with my own work and over time whether you can buy me or not. My name says it pretty clear where I stand and what people can expect from me.
I will be honoured if you will be so fair to take me for a review once this is through (March 2005).
By then speculation will have evaporated and we will see what will remain in the grill.
Good Afternoon, Stowe.
Disclaimer: I am a Marqui Blogger......
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/product_blog/
You Said;
''There is something interesting in here, but it is interesting in the same
way product placements in TV or movies are: when Matt Damon is swilling down
a Hieneken, you always wonder if it is being paid for, or is it just
random.''
I never wonder if it is paid for. I am not watching the show to see how many
paid product placements there are. I am probably wanting to see if he gets
the girl or how much stuff gets blown up. That you do, does show that you do
have a bias regarding advertising. This is not a value judgment.
You and Jason Calacanis are both condemming a new form of communication
before it happens. You are not as vociferous in your condemnation as Jason
is, but, You are guilty of prejudgement without any evidence. Here in
Arizona we call that 'leaping to conclusions'.
There is no evidence available yet other than Robin and My declarations of
what we are going to do, to back up the assertions that we are shills,
hucksters, whores or satan's spawn.
A little history is in order. 10 years ago we could not have this
conversation on the web. We could use Usenet or email, but without a news
reader, we couldn't have that. Usenet became unusable with the amount of
advertising that people were doing.
5 years ago we began to have the ability to have conversations on forums, on
websites that were strictly controlled by subject interest, or the
crankiness of the owners.
Today I am writing you using a TOOL, not a lifestyle, not a business, not a
holy object devoted to purity, and political correctness.
Let me explain why I am doing this.
I don't Need the money. I have a day job. I build websites, computers and
networks for small businesses. Because I am the IT guy for a lot of small
business, and supporting third party software is a large part of what I do.
I also test different products both hardware and software to see if it is
something that my clients may be interested in. I am constantly asked for
recommendations for products.I do not recommend products that I have not
tried and broken.
I am doing this to test and talk about a product that may be useful for my
clients. I am also doing this to cut out all of the current layers of
middlemen that get between companies and customers. Ad agencies, ad
placement companies, PR companies, and all of the other links in the chain
that currently get between people and products.
These layers which are at the heart of this debate.
I will be blogging about Marqui, and I will also be extending an invitation
to the Marqui development team as an author, giving them the same rights to
post on my blog as I.
This approach is radical.
25 years ago the idea of connecting computers together to exchange
information was a laughable idea.
That the earth revolved around the sun was a radical idea also. Severe
penalties applied.
We can disagree, but before tarring and feathering , don't you think that a
little evidence is in order?
Paid to write means paid to write which means all content was not chosen at the discretion of the author. However revolutionary the Marqui terms are it still means the author is contractually obligated to spend some of their time talking about a topic and there is no pretty way to paint it otherwise. [Another truism is that even if a person writes an excoriating review of a product, that product's google page rank will blindly increase nonetheless (more fodder for the "any press is good press" theory).]
I, however, have no problem with bloggers or any web publisher generating revenues by doing this. Blogs and webzines are not first-source publications, they are reviews and opinion pages and as sad as the state of journalistic integrity is these days, bloggers and similar sites do not aspire to blind coverage of all sides of the news, thus as entertainers they have a much looser responsibility to their readers.
Corante like the New York Times like almost anyone needs revenue to provide a service. As long as I know what on the page is paid content and what isn't I will be able to trust that source. So if you tell me the following review is part of a mandatory obligation stemming from a financial arraingment that's fine with me and it's the same as seeing a 'sponsored by' marker. Yet if I learn later that content was paid for and that relationship was not obvious to me, I will not read nor trust that site again. Simple as that. So I think Marqui is great and hope it helps good worthy writers sustain their valuable contributions. But I can't help but fear that this type of revenue-model, fueled by PR budgets and disingenuous corporate relation brokers, will likely meld into an opaque payola system with writers justifying their unmentioned relationships because they feel they deserve to get paid to do what they /want/ to do. Marqui will have to go to great lengths to separate themselves from the content-abuse that we will see take hold in the blogs as deeply as it is in today's 'traditional' media.
Permalink to CommentI believe that bloggers should be totally independent. That is what makes this medium so unique and valuable. I even dislike unobtrusive ads on blogs, although I understand the requirement to create a revenue stream. The lack of independence completely undermines the very positive and democratic nature of the blogosphere. I agree with Stowe Boyd!
Permalink to CommentPersonally I think that being paid to blog for a company isn't the right model and is counterintuitive to the entire movement.
Getting paid to blog is equivalent to "tripping over dollars to pick up pennies". Come on Marc and company don't sell out short here. Your a entrepreneur, innovator, and developer not a whore.
Build an industry don't peddle a product! Focus on the dollars not the pennies!
Permalink to CommentSetting aside the high-mindedness of objections for a second, I'm curious to see if the bloggers will actually be able give voice to the product/service Marqui is offering up. Which I cannot decipher from reading through their website, though I may in fact be in a position to use their service. Yeah, they need help. I can intuit from scanning their client list what they're up to, but how easy/effective is the service? That's their promise but I'm not about to make an inquiry at this point. This is a step up and sideways from testimonials. And if promoting their product/service this way keeps marketing/communication costs lower for the end user - like nonprofits and small business - then all the better.
And to the highmindedness: we're all peddling something even if it's just our egos.
Permalink to CommentOh, and Stowe, just as a matter of full disclosure, you yourself are not in any way affiliated with Silkroads, are you? And Silkroads is not in any way competing with Marqui - just to be clear about it. Even though it's just a banner in the upper right hand corner of your blog, you just have to question these things these days. And you're not affiliated with Silkeroads, in any way, right?
Permalink to CommentI'm sorry, it's laughable to call this campaign revolutionary. Gimme a friggin' break. Look at the trade press in just about every industry. There are magazines that review products of their advertisers and are nonetheless honest about their opinions. There are others that publish company press releases as "articles".
There's nothing inherent in the state of being a blogger (um, a human being and a publishing platform) that makes any of this revolutionary.
I guess everybody wants credit for shifting a paradigm these days. Geesh. It's sad is what it is, sad for blogging, but perhaps inevitable. :-(
Permalink to Comment
Tracked on November 29, 2004 02:20 PM
Stowe Boyd Takes a Swing at the Blogging Affiliates from Threadwatch.orgWe talked about this silliness of "product placement" aka affiliate marketing on influenti
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Whore me out, since I look better in Stilettos than you do. from Eric Rice The notion of being paid to openly write about a product should irritate me, since the concept is so anti-marketing. It's a virtually uncontrolled, yet coordinated, marketing effort. Blogging for economic capital vs. social capi... [Read More]Tracked on November 29, 2004 05:18 PM
Paid-to-blog; paid-to-write; write-to-live from RatcliffeBlog—Mitch's Open Notebook The feedback begins to come in about the Marqui blogger campaign. Just a thought, following on my comments about the abrupt interview with a Globe and Mail journo last week: About 20 years ago, when I started trying to... [Read More]Tracked on November 29, 2004 06:03 PM
Paid Bloggers Light Up Marqui from Clickable Culture When is an ad not an ad? When it's product-placement, according to Toronto-based online communications company Marqui. The firm is paying select bloggers a minimum of $800 monthly for a weekly mention and logo placement: "...we'r... [Read More]Tracked on November 30, 2004 10:10 AM
The Future in Marketing? from meryl's notes I’m one of them. I’ve been bought. Marqui has assimilated me, but I still retain control over my opinions. Some of you may have heard about it yesterday (here, here,... [Read More]Tracked on December 2, 2004 07:22 PM
New Media Journalism Ethics And The Marqui Blog Paid Assignment from Robin Good' Sharewood Tidings I am on a paid assignment for Marqui. I have chosen and applied to this paid assignment opportunity because I am specifically interested in cost-effective solutions that can help medium to large-sized international organizations a) migrate from legacy ... [Read More]Tracked on December 28, 2004 08:05 AM
UN Pays Bloggers For Saving Its Face: Let's See Who Are The Real Blog Shills from Robin Good's Latest News I have just rejected USD $ 80 for the following advertisement from the United Nations Foundation entitled: "Ensuring Credible and Fair Elections". I honestly do no think Iraqis are having the possibility to have credible and fair elections in the... [Read More]Tracked on January 29, 2005 11:41 AM
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