April 29, 2010

Ann Taylor Tries to Buy Off Bloggers

Ann Taylor tried to schmear a bunch of bloggers and almost got busted by the FTC. This is good news because it will force bloggers to shill less and will put lazy PR guys on notice that payola shouldn’t be the currency of choice in the blogsphere.

Here are the facts, as reported by Ad Age:
  • Ann Taylor invited selected bloggers to preview the Summer 2010 Loft collection
  • They promised those posting articles would be eligible for a “special gift”
  • The “mystery card drawing” offered gift cards valued from $50 to $500
  • To cash in bloggers had to submit their posts to the company within 24 hours
  • There was a sign at the event reminding bloggers that FTC rules require disclosure

Whoever thought this campaign up clearly believes that “pay for play” is the rule in dealing with bloggers. The on-site signage was a CYA move that didn’t really fake out the FTC. This is an effort to get right up to the line and exploit bloggers in ways that are impossible in dealing with official journalists.

Somebody probably thought that for a few bucks they might ignite a lot of attention because if they could get some action and attention on blogs, mainstream writers, who generally monitor blogs in their vertical coverage areas, might pile on. And eventually a PR snowball would build into serious coverage and some virility. I can visualize the pitch session, can’t you?

Instead it didn’t really work, the campaign invited unwanted scrutiny from the FTC and the whole affair sullied the brand. Ann Taylor ducked the enforcement bullet because it was their first offense and because the only got a couple of stories and some of the bloggers actually disclosed the gifts.

Shame on them. Ann Taylor has a legitimate story and should tell it in a legitimate way. Buying bloggers is bullshit and AT customers deserve better. [Full disclosure : I’m an AT loyalist . I led the team that launched their first e-commerce site in 1999.]

Bloggers, yours truly included, can’t always be looking for freebies or have their hands out. Hordes of bloggers have taken all kinds of merchandise from desperate or cheap retailers and lazy PR people for years.

But netizens aren’t stupid. They see through the scams, they smell the shills and they instinctively understand when they are being conned. The FTC rules and the surprising FTC scrutiny combined with the nascent threat of enforcement is a welcome activity to keep the blogsphere honest.

Apr 29, 2010 9:39:31 PM | Public Relations

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Radio Redux When I was a kid everybody listened to baseball and rock and roll on portable radios. From the time I was 12 till I went away to college I fell every night asleep listening to the radio tucked under my pillow. I had favorite stations and personal relationships with disc jockeys. Years later as a radio network and radio industry executive, I sold radio as a highly personal, targetable, mobile, local medium that was eclipsed but not killed by TV and cable. I argued that radio has a unique psychological connection with its listeners that other media can’t duplicate. Now in the digital age, radio’s exclusivity on mobility is gone and its place as the launching platform for bands and musical artists has been steadily diminishing, but radio continues to morph and survive. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at recent national telephone survey of 1753 people (12+) conducted by Edison Research and Arbitron. Where 78% of respondents agreed that people will listen to as much AM/FM radio as they do now and where 27% or 70 million people admitted to listening to radio online in the last month. Other salient and life-affirming (at least for radio) facts that emerged are … 40% of young people (12-24) would listen to more FM radio if their cell phones had an FM tuner. More than half said they’d be very disappointed if their favorite station went off the air. Radio listening is done primarily over the air (74%) versus 23% online via computer audio streams. A third of respondents had heard of HD(high definition) radio and 3 out of 4 were familiar with SiriusXM satellite radio. 39% still expect radio to introduce them to new sounds, new artists and new musical genres, though the Internet with 31% is closing fast. Pandora is a big factor. 43 million people listened to online radio in the last week. Yours truly is one of them. Evidently listeners like me, who tune in on their computers at work, can cherry pick the best stations in their favorite format from across the dial and across the globe. It’s about control, variety and fewer commercials. Online radio is attracting 15% more listeners than AM/FM listeners combined. Cars, MP3 players and cell or smartphones are the preferred reception devices. Not surprising, big radio listeners listen more over the air and online than the average listener. Yet only 1 in 3 have ever visited a radio station web site. The online radio audience is worth selling to. More than half of online listeners (55%) are college-educated men and two-thirds are 25-54 and employed full-time with almost 1 in 5 earning $100K+ HH Incomes. As a guy with a face made for radio, there’s goodness here. Nothing has ever killed off the radio star because the audio medium has a distinctive psychology which pushes buttons and provokes memories and stirs emotions in ways other media don’t. Radio has a unique and personal “method of action” which is its hedge against invention, fads and technology.
PREVIOUS POST
Driving Clicks: Getting Your Button Right The goal of the new website is engage customers and enter into an on-going conversation between the brand at their customers. The operational objective is to build a database by encouraging consumers to sign up. The offer, like so many, is so-so; information, news, tips and a plain vanilla e-newsletter. The big question is, what do we say to encourage opt-ins. How do we label the big red opt-in button for maximum action? You’d think that after all these years, there would be “best practices” that were tested again and again so that we could just plug-in tried and true verbiage and watch the forms fill themselves out. But no such luck. So I ran a one-question poll on LinkedIn (roughly the target demographic) to seek wisdom from our customer base. The question was “which button would prompt you to click?” The choices were : Learn More Join Now Sign Up Enroll Today Register I pinged roughly 2000 people using my links and my Twitter, Facebook and e-mail contacts. Over the course of a week I got 87 responses. Not a very impressive 0.04 response rate for asking 1 question to people who actually know me! I hope I didn't annoy too many of them. Nonetheless the answers were intriguing, enlightening but only partially definitive. LEARN MORE was the clear winner. Fifty-five percent of all responders said this would prompt at click. Among VP and C level responders, three-quarters chose this one. Two-thirds of the older responders (35-54) liked this one and women liked this much more than men – exactly 14% more. I suspect this wins because it requires the least investment or commitment. The offer is the next step – find out what all this is. But my hunch is that while this button will draw the most clicks, it will NOT prompt the most registrations because the same lack of intention will be applied. Once they find out more, they won’t be all that interested and then they’ll abandon the site. JOIN NOW came in second drawing two-thirds of the 18-24 responses. It is the transparent, straightforward choice. You are committing to something, you know there is an implied quid pro quo and you are going for it. I suspect that this button will yield the most actual opt-in registrations. SIGN-UP ranked third. Four times more men picked this choice and 17% of all manager-level responders preferred it. It, too, is very straightforward and almost imperative. You know that if you give up your information somebody will send you some stuff. Even in a nanosecond, it requires a conscious decision to want in. ENROLL TODAY with 4 percent and REGISTER with 2 percent seems like the losers. Maybe they are a bit old fashioned in terms of connotation or perhaps they feel too formal or academic. Maybe they imply much too much intention and commitment. Either way neither clear word seems to have any motivational amperage. So what did I learn? Five not-too-surprising things … Asking the customer always beats your best guess. Women and men have significantly different responses. Age and status impact response. Low commitment yields potentially more clicks. Now you can use this data to label your buttons.

Danny Flamberg

I am a veteran marketing consultant working with leading and emerging brands

The Typepad Team

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments