Brands Billed in the Blogosphere!

 Are Brands moving in the blogosphere?

This would be consistent with the growing influence of bloggers and brands trend to move towards Social Marketing.  We sometimes forget, that blogs, despite their disseminate nature, are one of the most dynamic social media tools.

Gary Hayes' Social Media Counts  , that displays in real time the evolution of social medias, indicates, for example, that in one minute, 630 new posts are published on blogs for 2806 new tweets, equaling a ratio of 1 to 4.5.

A very positive ratio for blogs, given that posts are much denser than tweets.

Technorati, the famous blog search engine, annually publishes a State of the Blogoshpere, which also analyzes blogs economic activity.

Marketing executives admit more and more that bloggers post high quality content and attract growing and loyal audiences.

The 2008 study already suggested that a strong percentage of bloggers monetize their sites in different ways:

Average revenue generated by blogs was $6000, with 1% of blogs yielding sales of more than $200,000!

The 2009 study,  just published by Technorati, indicates that a large majority of bloggers monetize their sites or would like to.

Nevertheless a variety of ways characterizes the monetization of blogs:

Advertising is not the only path offered to bloggers.  As leaders of opinion the influence acknowledged by bloggers is highlighted in the graph below:

This reality can only precede a strengthened investment of brands in regards to blogs. 

Even more so, given that posts often mention brand names. 70% of bloggers confirm that they talk about brands. 

Technorati, classifying bloggers into several categories (hobbyist, part-timers, self-employed and corporate workers), reveals the following motives:

Ratios and cases already analyzed for Twitter emphasize how important it is that brands consider the influence of blogs. Among those bloggers that mention brands or products in their posts, 47% do so on a monthly basis.

It is in this context that the F.T.C. (Federal Trade Commission), responsible for protecting the American consumers, decided that bloggers, starting on December 4th, should disclose all advertising revenue or sales generated by their blogs. 

However, will this apparently positive decision for a greater transparency, be applicable  ?

The obligation to disclose all “material connections” between brands and blogs, which is not forced upon traditional media,  also risks affecting the press copies for writing reviews.

Facing much protest, which was touched upon this weekend by L. Gordon Crovitz, the influential columnist of The Wall Street Journal, there is a possibility that the FTC is backtracking, at least in part. 

 Since  the FTC decision is likely to include tweets or updates on Facebook, Gordon Crovitz questions,

“There are also practical objections.  For example, if you get a free copy of a book and then post a comment about it on Twitter, how many of the permitted 140 characters must be dedicated to the disclosure?  Do employees of a company have to disclose the fact of their employment every time they comment on its products through their personal Facebook accounts?”

In wanting to over regulate Social Commerce, will governments become anti-social?

Pepsi “Amp Up”: The Social Excuse Way & The Bad Buzz Strategy

Pepsi learns to “socially” apologize to women while playing it buzz macho.

Whether a difficult exercise or premeditated calculation, to promote its energy drinks Amp Energy, Pepsi took the initiative and developed an App for the Iphone entitled “Amp Up, Before you Score”, which involves “classifying” women into 24 different categories and obtaining “information” about these, as well as tips on how to seduce them.

They may be only stereotypes and caricatures, but, according to Pepsi, are in tune with Amp Energy’s male public.

Though it's not even certain that men identify with a simplistic vision of seduction, pretending to share common interests by using fitting responses provided by the application, which looks for them on Wikipedia or Twitter.

Would the public of Amp Energy be comparable to Pat Healy in the film There’s Something About Mary!?

Worse, this is the general overview of Amp Up Before You Score as it appears on the App store:

“Here’s how it works:

1. Identify her type

Got your eye on a girl, and aren’t sure how to get started?  Pick out her profile, flip the card, and study up quick with a cheat sheet on the stuff she’s into with lists, links and some surefire opening lines (surefire to what, we won’t say.)

2. Keep a list

            Get lucky?  Add her to your Brag list.  You can include a name, date and                 whatever details you remember.

3. Brag

You got it?  Flaunt it.  Keep your buddies in the loop on email, Facebook or Twitter.”

Keeping with the "subtlety" of Amp Up, the App includes an "elegant" “After you Score”!  

In fact the App was not successful. Launched in mid-summer, “Amp Up, Before you Score” quickly topped out at 1400^th according to Mőbclix, free Apps ranking .

This went on until “bad tweets” mainly from women started to appear little by little on Twitter provoking the release of very negative articles such as the one in the Wall Street Journal on Oct 13 entitled,

 “Looking for obnoxious chauvinism?  There’s an app for that.”

And so Pepsi found itself in the middle of a real brand image problem.

While Amp Up suddenly had a great public success by becoming, within two days, the 8^th most popular free download, is this result positive for Amp Energy and Pepsi?

Some say yes, associating an energy drink with picking up women, male chauvinism, and seduction, is a well known strategy called “bad buzz”, adapted for this type of product.

However, the bad buzz strategy from now on, needs to take into account the existence of social networks and their capacity to impact a brands reputation.

For Seth Godin, known blogger and author of Tribes,

“Pepsi is learning a valuable lesson in social media marketing the hard way, for too long advertisers and marketers thought it was okay to treat women as objects to sell something.  The difference between now and then is [general public] now has a platform to complain about it.  This is a symptom of platform shifting.  Pepsi’s not the only brand that’s going to have to learn this lesson.”

This “citizen” change shows that the rules of “buzz marketing” have changed!  In the past, this was a way to help launch a product by creating a growing buzz, generated by communication actions, before or around the launching of a product.

However,  buzz were unregulated and shapeless by definition.  With the dawn of social networks, the buzz can no longer avoid taking the form of global conversations, nor can they avoid  the control that network users exert through these conversations concerning the value and authenticity of marketing campaigns.

Thus, if  Amp Energy could have been satisfied with this transgressive “bad buzz” toward its targeted audience and the growing success of the App on the Iphone, the brand now runs the risk of degrading its image and losing its footing to the playing field of this transgressive aspect.

This risk is high since Amp Energy largely associates itself with sports, including by promoting women.

Amp Energy is left with trying to repair the damage by presenting excuses.

Here the result is also catastrophic because Amp Energy apologizes but doesn't pull the App from the App store.

Once again this is a total lack of authenticity that does not go unnoticed in social network days.

Worse look at  the bottom of the excuse.  Amp Energy encourages Twitter users to send their comments using a specific hashtag called #pepsifail .

Behind the apparently good idea to open up a specific channel on Twitter, Amp Energy light-heartedly attaches the Pepsi brand, which is much more of a household name than Amp Energy.

The famous site Advertising Age very rapidly did the diagnostics of the situation,

“The Amp brand Twitter feed has only 1,000 followers, compared to about 15,000 for Pepsi, almost 18,000 for Mtn Dew and nearly 5,000 for PepsiCo…

The tag, along with the re-tweets, seems to unnecessarily associate Pepsi and Mtn Dew, two of the company’s largest brands, with a heated and potentially damaging debate.  Ostensibly, those who have a problem with the app are not Amp’s core customers, after all.

But now that Pepsi, Mtn Dew, and Pepsi corporate have attached themselves to the debacle, the problem appears much larger, as those brands and, indeed, the entire company may appear insensitive to women.  For example, many of the tweets commenting on the app have bypassed the Amp brand entirely and are instead assigning the apology, the App and their distaste to Pepsi.”

Now New Fiction  a well known blog claims:

“Alienate Your Female Customer?  Pepsi Has An App For That” 

 

Bad buzz or social reputation?  It’s up to Pepsi to decide……