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October 20, 2005Perception is everything in advertising and apparently word of mouth
I’ve been having some email conversations about the commercial alert letter to the FTC, P & G and my blog post yesterday. While I don’t agree with Gary Ruskin’s letter in relation to P & G, bearing further evidence. I am glad Commercial Alert raised the issue.
Zach Rodgers gave me his permission to print his personal comments about his personal thoughts about the incident, �My feeling is a lot of these practices are insidious without being illegal.� Although Zach writes for ClickZ.com these are his personal comments.
Also, see Matt Galloway’s post and Matthew Hurst’s comments on his blog ‘The Basement’.
I think Zach is one of many people who feel that the practice of marketing to young people or people in general (maybe?) in this way is seen as being insidious. I might suggest that is probably why Commercial Alert targeted P & G either they felt it was insidious or they thought everyone else would too. I don't know if the practice is illegal or not, though I have tried this morning to get more information out of the FTC (very difficult). I think the fact that P & G's Tremor service targeted young people makes everyone slightly nervous about the activity. But nervousness does not make something illegal, but it might damage a company's reputation.
Perception is everything in advertising and apparently word of mouth.
However, maybe this perspective will change your opinion:
I was thinking the P & G example is a little bit like going to a supermarket where someone asks you to test a product, say a dip or a new type of microwave sandwich. If I ate the product, liked it, bought it and went home and told all my friends. Commercial alert is suggesting the company would ask me to inform everyone I spoke with about the new product that I received a free product at the supermarket. Somehow I don't think that type of product testing and promotion is against the FTC rules. What do you think?
Posted by johncass at October 20, 2005 4:49 PM
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Comments
I think your example is dead on. Dave Balter of BzzAgent will tell you from experience the disclosing the fact that you got a "free sample" will have little or no effect on the influence of the endorsement. It's all about the level of trust between the two folks.
In the bigger picture - who cares. These "WOM advocates" are not in it for the free products and they don't get rewarded for passing on a good word and the company can't stop them from spreading negative buzz. At the end of the day, if the product isn't any good, no recommendations or worse - negative recommendations will happen. Instead of markeing to kids by paying Paris Hilton to strip naked and perform sex acts on a cheese burger, marketers are spending money on giving volunteers access to limited free product so that they can tell others if they like using it.
Why is this a bad thing?
Posted by: Matt Galloway at October 20, 2005 5:55 PM
