People Trust People Like Themselves
Josh Bernoff adds more to the discussion of “Sponsored Conversations” in this worthy-read Ad Age piece.
He readily admits it’s a controversial topic for brands to compensate bloggers for sharing their honest opinions about a company’s products/services. Josh stresses both the brand and the blogger must be upfront about the relationship and that the blogger must be honest in any opinion published on their blog.
At the heart of the “Sponsored Conversations” discussion is the fact that people trust people like themselves. The Edelman Trust Barometer has been measuring the credibility of spokespeople for years and in those years, the “trust” people place with other people they can relate to has increased.
Bloggers, for the most part, are people like us. They aren’t necessarily trained experts or schooled journalists. They are people more like us; passionate about gadgets, movies, music, and everything else that makes life interesting.
However, the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals the credibility of nearly every spokesperson is down around the world, including the credibility people place with people they can relate to.
Sure, bigger issues like the economic downturn and continued mistrust in government affected the 2009 survey results. But the decline in trust is worrisome for marketers wanting to tap into the credibility of everyday people as word of mouth advocates, especially with “Sponsored Conversations.”
My fear, as a marketer, is some of us will fall into the trap of “what gets measured gets manufactured.” We’ve measured that real opinions from real people are more meaningful than anything churned out by a company’s marketing department. The temptation for marketers to manufacture conversations with people in the real world and the online world is great. Maybe too great for some marketers to abstain from doing and from manipulating.
In his Ad Age article, Josh rightly warns marketers about not manipulating blogger-driven conversations, “Make sure any and all bloggers you work with make it VERY clear to their audience that your brand is involved in the development of the content. If you fail to do this you will put yourself at risk for not only a bad PR mess but legal trouble as well.”
