Clumsy and Dishonest Marketing Offends Bloggers

Posted on October 14, 2005

Liza Sabater at Culture Kitchen blogs about how she was approached by a group trying to promote a project through a viral marketing blog campaign. Later she saw ads for the same project appear on the BlogAds Liberal Blogs Network, which her blog is also a part of.

Well, here's the deal people : You have crossed the line. It is not viral marketing on my blog when you pay for advertisment to other bloggers. When you do that, you have an ad campaign in place. Asking me to do it for free is in labor-talk, "explotation".
I am going to go one step further. To expect me give my labor for free when you have deliberately passed on paying for advertisement on my site is tacky, rude and, quite frankly, insulting.
And what is most upsetting about all of this? These people are supposed to be the champions of the new labor movement.
Sorry honey, but I am not your blogmonkey.

This is a good lesson here for marketers approaching the blogosphere. If you are going to pitch blogs about your product you should disclose that there is also a blog advertising campaign going on -- especially if the campaign is running on blogs similar to blogs you are pitching. And being dishonest about an ad campaign is a big no-no. Unfortunately for bloggers companies aren't always as organized as they appear and they sometimes hire one company for advertising and hire another company for PR without any coordination between the advertising and PR companies.