Flogs – When will they learn?
Posted December 14th, 2006 by admin
I’m sure by now everyone has gotten sick of hearing about marketers being ousted for the creation of fake viral campaigns/promotions. I thought they would have gotten the message in October when a pro-Walmart blog was revealed as a “flog,” aka a fake blog.
If you haven’t heard by now, Sony was recently exposed again for attempted stealth marketing, the latest craze. The site “all I want for xmas is a psp,” initially written in phony gangsta slang and Internet lingo, was supposedly about someone helping his friend buy a PSP. Live for less than a month, the authors were finally forced into admitting on Wednesday that the blog was created as a marketing tool by Zipatoni, a consumer activation agency.
Sony then transitioned the site to showcase “cool” products and give readers “nothing but the facts on the PSP” and turned the blog’s comment function off after receiving 600+ rants from disgruntled visitors. But you won’t be reading this blog anytime soon since they shut down the site while I was writing this post!
This latest flog incident is just another Yule log on the fire that has been roasting under Sony’s derriere. Last year Sony was in hot water for their hiring of graffiti artists in major cities who were painting murals including images of kids playing with the Sony PSP.
The issue of flogs has been taken up by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As stated in the Washington Post on Tuesday, the FTC said “that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.” I find that perfectly reasonable. Flogs are completely deceiving and insulting to bloggers. I personally do not want to be swindled into thinking one thing about a site and then finding out I’ve been duped. When will they ever learn?
