Keep It Real

By now, you’ve probably heard about Belkin’s attempt to pump its products by paying for fake product views. If you haven’t, here’s thumbnail sketch. Michael Bayard, a business development representative for Belkin advertised for people to provide fake reviews of Belkin products using Mechanical Turk, a side business of Amazon.com. The blogosphere went wild with negative publicity, promoting Belkin CEO Mike Reynoso to post this letter on the Belkin Web site:

Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad. So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.

See the rest of this letter

OK, first of all, that’s a pretty good recovery. Why? The reason is that the furor mainly occurred in the blogosphere. Posting a letter online gives bloggers a reason to copy and post the letter to their blogs, thus ensuring that it is read by Belkin detractors.

Second, if you’re interested in getting online reviews and publicity, there are legitimate, if not more time consuming ways, to get visibility for your products. Here’s a short list:

Get legitimate reviews: provide access to your product to real consumers and ask them to post a review. Do not indicate how you would like them to write the review. And, for God’s sake, do not pay them to write the review!
Ask a trusted group of friends to review your product. However, you must make sure that 1) They are not connected in any way to your company or have any financial stake in your product, and 2) You do not influence the writing of the review in any way.

Given how rapidly the blogosphere blew the lid off of this story, it’s clear that bloggers have great influence. Pitch your product to them. Before you give access to your product, make sure you have a good story to tell. It’s not just about the product benefits. Make sure you know what the product means to your audience.

While traditional press is less influential than in the past, make sure you pitch traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.

How Belkin manages this issue is essential to the company gets it’s branding back on track. If you’re promoting, remember, keep it real.

Emerging Principles for Web 2.0 Marketing

As a PR person who is absorbing everything about social media that I can, I recommend this article from PR Tactics. It gives a good overview of how Web 2.0 can fit into your customer relations program.

Emerging principles for Web 2.0 marketing
addthis_pub = 'prsaweb';

Dec.18, 2008
The technological tools of Web 2.0 — blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, virtual worlds — offer marketers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers. But as The Wall Street Journal reports, most companies are still not well-versed in these new possibilities. With input from 30 executives at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools, three college professors have identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.

See full article.

A Picture's Worth

I was taking another look at Nadav Kander’s “Obama’s People”, in the Jan. 18 New York Times Magazine. It’s an amazing series of portraits that depict Barack Obama’s Cabinet.

I reacted very emotionally to the images. I really like Vice President Biden’s picture. It’s very warm and paternal. Hillary’s photo was also very human and likable. Rahm Emanuel was bored and irreverent. You can tell that he has sharp tongue.

So, why are so many of the staff stone faced and serious. Take Ellen Moran, the new White House Communications Director. She has this no-nonsense look that makes you start explaining yourself, even if you’re not involved. It’s like the clock is already running on your conversation. It’s not at all like her photo on Emily’s List, which is much warmer.

Deisree Rogers, the White House Secretary, also has this ultra-serious look. With her elegant chin and deep brown eyes she looks regal, queenly. It’s a look that reminds you to get to the point right away, or risk scorn. Interestingly I saw her at one of the Inauguration events. She was talking with someone and smiling. She looked positively beautiful and approachable (not that I did).

So, maybe it’s an obvious question, but why is it that the most powerful among us are free to smile, while those who are one the “business end” of the stick must present themselves as these armor-plated creatures that can make you self-conscious with glance?

Take a look and comment.