The Anti-Case Study: Authentic Blogger Outreach
Author: Katie
At #180series yesterday the audience asked our panel an interesting question (via our Uservoice forum):
What are some popular examples of social media gone wrong?
I guess there are some very famous examples of social media snafus – Dominos, MotrinMoms, etc. All classic stories of big brands ignoring the online community until too late and then scrambling to do damage control. But the question got me thinking about social media gone wrong from the other side – small brands trying to use social media to increase awareness and buzz around their products and failing to do so.
“Authentic” Blogger Outreach
A little while back a coworker brought me a proposal [edit: I misrepresented this situation in my original post] that an agency (The Agency) had sent to us as a bid to work on one of our current clients. It was a blogger outreach plan complete with an example of previous work The Agency had done for a client that sold organic juice for children (Juice Client.)
In this case, I’m using the term “blogger outreach” in a very broad sense. The basic premise of the campaign was that The Agency had hired 5-7 people to impersonate blogger personas. These people were very close to the personality type they were taking on, but they were not the actual person. For example, one persona was a “daddy blogger” father of two who was very concerned about diet, organic food and nutrition for his kids (Daddy O.) The person playing Daddy O was also a father and may have cared about diet but was not actually Daddy O. In order to fulfill the “authentic” part of the plan, Daddy O created a fake Facebook account and a few other traces of his personality across the web in case anyone searched for him. Personally, I don’t think that’s very authentic at all.
The process was that Daddy O would search for forums and blogs about health and kids and write some sort of response. He would work in how he bought Juice Client product for his kids and they loved it and since it was also good for them, he was happy. Then he would include a link of course. I clicked on some of the links to his responses that were included in the case study to see examples of this in action. In the ones where his post was still there, it was the first and only post that was ever made under that screen name. When people responded to him he didn’t return and continue the conversation, and when you looked at his profile it was basically a short description of his persona and a link to Juice Client. In the other ones it was clear his post had been deleted.
The one question I keep repeating in my mind as I’m reading and looking through all this is: WHY? Why did you have to make up people? There are so many legitimate (actually authentic) daddy bloggers, mommy bloggers, parent communities, etc that you could have reached out to and gotten real people’s honest opinions on this. And that kind of campaign would have been way more beneficial. Because those people are real, and talk about this stuff all the time, if you’d gotten them hooked on your product they would still be singing its praises right now, whereas the fake bloggers you created are only going to do it on the clock and stop as soon as you quit paying them. No wonder it never took off.
There’s an easy way and a hard way to do things. Taking the time to contact bloggers, send them samples of your juice, ask them to post honest opinions on what they thought about it and disclose that they were sent free juice – That’s the hard way. It takes time, some money, and patience. The easy way gets you links right away, quick results that you can show the client and then end your engagement before they realize that won’t last.
Sometimes the hardest thing is the right thing (pretty sure I stole that from some song somewhere – just can’t place it…) and in this case it really is. Social media is sometimes put forward as an easy, quick thing to do when in reality it’s not. It’s a long term commitment where the pay off isn’t always immediate. We, as agencies, consultants, PR professionals, social media experts (or amateurs), or whatever you call yourself, need to prepare the client for that. It’s our job to explain to them how this works and why they need to take the time to do it right rather than go for the easy, quick win. Let’s all take that responsibility a little more seriously.
Thoughts? Think I’m being too hard on The Agency? Share your opinions in the comments!
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typically ringers are brought in to encourage real people.
branding and messaging can be so important for the sake of time and the campaign that false identities are used. and if the company does it right, it works.
i believe i’m one of the first people to actually do this on projects in 2000. Some projects take really well to it and some are tougher fits. They key is to do the right thing for the project.
The right thing is always changing.
also- some would say it’s bad for companies to share proposals to other studios.
if the other company didn’t want you seeing their proposal, then the same could be said about reading it as making personas.
altho, im a big fan of no rules as long as the client and consumer are happy.
@ben I realize there are reasons why people would feel like using fakes could be beneficial and I’m not saying there aren’t cases where it’s worked. I just know that the public is going to wise up to it, as some communities already have, and it will eventually ruin the communication channel as a whole. It will breed mistrust to the point that the public will see online reviews as just another avenue for spam (more on that in a later post.) So my point is that yes it’s harder and could take longer to do it without using fakes – but the long term pay off is greater. I take a very idealist approach to PR and social media and I know that
Also I recognize your concern in your second point – about sharing confidential information. Which is why I didn’t use any real names nor do I plan to talk about who they are. The Agency as a whole has done a lot I like – I just disagreed with this particular tactic. I also went back to my emails to make sure and I mispoke when I described the situation. The Agency sent the proposal to us as a bid to help us with a client we’re currently working with – the proposal was not in fact sent by the client as I had thought.
Hope that clears some things up – I’ll make an edit in the post as well. Thanks for pointing that out.
Katie,
Yet another great post. I too think that setting up ‘fake’ people online is a big mistake – but its funny that it seems to be one of the things that comes up when thinking about starting a social campaign.
One of the things that is tough for an agency is to convey that social campaigns are long term investments – its like the treasury bill of marketing. Slow but steady growth. And clients understandably have a hard time committing the dollars or time to such a campaign. Its funny how social has made business stop and work at the tried and true tactic of actually building business based on relationships again – the way it was done ‘back in the day’. Now we’re just using different tools.
Let me ask you this: Do you know if the Juice Client was happy with the ‘fake bloggers’ or the results that The Agency provided? Sometimes those of us in social media have a lower tolerance for this kind of thing than businesses. I’m just curious if this was an acceptable short term gain for the Juicer.
Thanks again – This is something I hope to elaborate on, as its a great example of what not to do.
@ryancmiller
The Agency did not send actual result figures – but since they were using it as a case study I’m assuming the results were considered successful by the business. I think you’re right, businesses generally have a higher tolerance for these things. But I think that’s because they don’t fully understand it, they see some short term gains, an increase in sales or rankings or whatever metric they’re trying to increase and they’re satisfied. I (and the rest of us in the industry who are so hard on this) look at it and think it only reached a fraction of it’s potential. They might be happy with what I see as 25% success because that’s 25% they didnt have before but I think about what it could have been if they’d gone for the whole 100%. In this example that would mean that yes they saw some increased buzz for a few months while the campaign was running, maybe a lift in sales and rankings but then all of that likely dipped right back down to average (like I said I don’t KNOW I’m just speculating) had they used real people who continue to post reviews and tell their friends about their favorite products long after it’s released they might still be seeing those increased sales and rankings.
In short, yes businesses can be satisfied with a lot less than the best possible results, but as their agencies and consultants it’s our job to do what’s best for them even if that means exceeding their expectations
If it’s done right..it should be impossible to tell if the person is real or not. also, there are moral issues even when posting as an alternate identity.
most people miss the biggest point when posting with a created identity. it’s not supposed to trick people into anything and you shouldn’t use it to lie or make claims that arent true.there are a few other things i would also consider personally when using one of these.
the identity must be developed over time before ever being used in marketing.
identities cannot be used in all projects.
identities should only be used when they have to be.
theyre only used to jumpstart campaigns. fake identities are used to get real ones.
they should usually point people in the right direction. not convince them of anything.
As all things in marketing do..tactics go in and out of style. This has been around forever..Betty Crocker was a fake identity on the radio and it worked really well.
I think these three points are the most important:
identities should only be used when they have to be.
theyre only used to jumpstart campaigns. fake identities are used to get real ones.
they should usually point people in the right direction. not convince them of anything.
I just challenge whether you could do those things without a fake identity. Why can’t I just be who I am – admit that I work for a company, come into a community and say “hey, I work for Juice Client. We just came out with this new product. If you interested in trying it we’ll (send you a sample/give you a discount/etc). We made it for parents like you and would really like to get some feedback on it.” or something along those lines. That covers point 2 and 3 without having to lie to the consumer. Because like you mention below – if for some reason they do figure out your not real (because your profile never gets updated, you never respond to the questions they ask, etc) the backlash from consumers who feel “tricked” can get pretty bad (Think along the lines of the fallout from the fake Exxon employee.)
I won’t argue that it never works, I think it probably does. I just wouldn’t recommend it for the points I’ve listed – it’s not long term and there’s a possibilty you’ll get caught and you risk the range of punishment from posts being deleted (as some of this campaign’s were), losing faith from your consumers, or starting a PR firestorm. To me the pros, fast and easy, don’t outweight those cons. That’s my opinion and like I said, I’m the first to admit I come from the idealist camp of social media marketing and PR. Maybe that’s a good follow up post…hmmm…
advertising is selling what you have: the facts.
Marketing, very often, is selling what you don’t have; it’s the art of the tease.
i could write pages upon pages why someone wouldn’t tell what company they work for and who they are. it really depends on how creative the campaign is and what the campaign is selling. (also you could argue that you do agree with the product and that people already use monikers online, so it is okay as long as you believe in the product you’re marketing- which is a whole other topic)
and again, to me, if you do it right- everyone should win. i will say, it is a very small part of any full scale campaign if it is used. one shouldn’t ignore short team tactics in a long term campaign. there are strategies i’m morally against (credit card companies on college campuses)..this just isn’t one of them if done right.
lastly, i would say- these identities even borderline being real- they’re usually more updated and developed than my own online persona, since i’m a private person. you can use these online personas in a positive way or a negative/potentially negative way. i’ve seen it both.
but i get your point, and it’s something someone should ask themselves constantly if they feel capable enough to do this sort of thing. do you think the people on the herpes commercials really have herpes?
also (sorry about these tagged on posts)
i’d like to mention one more major thing. most studios/firms aren’t intelligent enough to use created identities. when a company does something they don’t respect and understand it almost always turns sour and turns off the customer. with that being said… i would say almost all firms aren’t mentally equipped enough to use them.
well, i have to say i’m not in agreement with these conclusions, but i like your viewpoint. this subject has too many variables and false info in the market that i do not know what to believe. i guess it’s a matter of being informed. [author's edit: removed link to "buy acai" website as it was not related to this post or this response]
Great site…keep up the good work.
I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, 
A definite great read.. ..
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