Why not. That’s where Ben is headed with his take on the whole Kmart sponsored postapalooza in today’s Business Week column.
Snark: Paid thoughts. Hmmm. Telling your own kids “Why can’t you be more like the other kids in the KFC commercial—you know, normal?” Great. You just helped create the Future High School Bombers of America Group on Facebook.
Non-snark: Ahhh, lemmings again defend paid posts and/or in-content sponsorships. (*epic sigh*) I don’t care how much you get paid, when you start dropping names or talk about many products you don’t otherwise use, it erodes the trust someone has in you and changes the dynamic of that relationship you first built with them.
Unless, people only know you as a paid shill, then you have no cred whatsoever because you’re for sale no matter what the product. And why the fuck should anyone care what you think if one week you rave about a hair dryer and the next how great Pampers are? That’s the thing the PPP crowd doesn’t understand.
(Much as I disagree, I still recognize that there’s a major difference between someone like a Scoble who would decide to endorse something once vs. the now countless number of Mommy Bloggers and Tony Robbins wannabes who will flood their little corner of the internet with reviews of anything and everything.)
Who can trust that?
(Exception: If Dave started shilling for NASA’s new line of lightweight, whisper-quiet hybrid jetpacks, that’s different. He’d have reached the promised land and remained true to his blog’s mission-critical voice. Dig that NASA terminology!)
I’m not even pissed at brands either. You expect them to try anything to get customers. It’s clear most still don’t realize that people are numb to all their yelling. Everyone else in the PPP crowd though just wants to hit it big writing about products they have no clue about. Just one more affiliate page that you see when you mistype a word on Google adding to all the white noise.
Which reminds me, did I mention the SONY MDR-NC6 noise canceling headphones I just got?
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