So many ‘Mart’ promotions, so little time.

If you’re just catching up on the Kmart promotion fun over the weekend, questions were raised regarding one blogger chosen to participate, Chris Brogan. Scorecard? Okay... I saw it at Adpulp and Brogan responded to everyone here. My main question is here, with his reply followed again by mine. Most of my views on this are in those questions.

But wait, there’s more—additional thoughts on this and social media peeves in general can be yours for the low, low price of... FREE:

It’s ironic that of all the ‘Marts’ that have run promotions in the past year or so, it’s the fictional world of the Kwik-E-Mart that went the smoothest.

Way too many sheeple parroting the same old social media talking points about transparency, writing elaborate missives that always agree with the A-list. Understandable actually. To do otherwise means they risk losing their coveted ‘expert-guru’ status.

Telling people you’re part of a contest doesn’t cover you on everything.

Still others think the idea of a slippery slope is outdated and that more than a few people in this space believe you should make your own rules up as you go along. The ethical flexibility implicit in this is interesting to say the least. That’s fine if we’re talking about a decision to shill a product or carry ads on your blog. After all, do what you want—it’s your blog.

Running contests though requires actual laws to consider and the appearance of being impartial. The latter ain’t me talking, that’s the court of public opinion, like it or not.

Speaking of, this is my main point: the contest eligibility regs are here. Standard boilerplate which every agency follows. Chris says he is on an advisory board of the media agency running the promotion,(PayPerPost™ Izea), and is also being compensated to help run the same contest. If that isn’t somehow violating the spirit of the reg at the very least, then there’s not much else I can say. (Again, make money, fine. But these regs are not recommendations you can pick and choose as you wish, otherwise, every agency in the country would rig every contest.)

Izea is showing how far media shops still have to go if they’re going to be trusted to do more for a brand than a media buy. Thinking beyond one channel is important. As such, there is zero tie-in with the Sears/Kmart community blog and zero mention there whatsoever of this contest or the participating bloggers. How does that even happen?

Too many people using the word Kudos. Perfect for playrights—not perfect for bloggers.

Kmart didn’t look closely at who was blogging. Or they did and instead enlisted some of that ethical flexibility.

This should never have been about the bloggers, it’s about the brand. Even though PR freaks love the hoopla, it still detracts.

Not one self-proclaimed stay at home expert mommy blogging social media ‘fan’ who responded on blogs or Twitter bothered to question if the actual promotion was valid for the brand. It’s really not ‘pushing the envelope’ to wave cash in front of someone to get them interested. That’s old school used car dealer shit and undermines the potential of what social media could do. Instead, they were more concerned with rushing en masse to protect their heroes against all comers. Why?

Because in social media, if the leader is wrong, the followers are wrong, and we can’t have it Billy Ho!

Alan has a better alternative and more fitting location to run a promo like this. (This is because Alan is not a mommy blogger.)

Nobody wants to answer a direct question, instead raising a different one. Sweet!

The social media experts forgot their own Social Media 101: They control nothing; silencing a dissenting opinion only works in China.

I would love it if more people would hijack a post with excerpts from their own blog on an unrelated post. Awesome™.

For all the talk of paradigm-shifting openness and the breaking down of the traditional sanctity of things in this New World Blog Order 3.0™, it was clear from the vast majority of comments that anyone who disagrees or raises legit questions is summarily dismissed as a troll or ignored. Ironic, this supposed age of conversation going on, eh? But I behaved myself and didn’t use the word a-hole once.

It’s also clear that I wouldn’t let most of the commenters promote a tag sale.

(Image via.)

Tags: #Kmart, Kmart Gift Card