Is using your internet celebrity to sell or recommend products or services wrong? If it is then we need to go back and take a look at the whole world of celebrity endorsements across all industries.
The idea of celebrity endorsements for products, services, or anything else under the sun is not something new. Celebrities have been endorsing products since the start of the newspaper when a celebrity endorsement promised a larger audience than just the immediate circle of friends and family. Endorsements are popular, widely used, and many of the commercials we watch on TV are all about someone who is a celebrity plugging some product or service. Where would Nike be without Michael Jordan?
Over on Facebook, Jason Calcanis is plugging a person named Shawn Collins, Robert Scoble is sponsored by Seagate, Techcrunch, Read Write Web, and a host of others are also sponsored by many companies so that they can continue to write good articles, or do good things. When a blogger decides that they want to sponsor someone, an issue, a concern, or be sponsored by someone because they are popular, is that really such a bad thing? It is not a new business process; it is not a new advertising game. What this kind of sponsorship does is tap into the celebrities’ good will and name recognition to plug products or services. Essentially there is no difference between Robert Scoble being sponsored by Seagate and a NASCAR driver being sponsored by a company on their car. It is all about sponsorship and it is all about getting products placed visibly on the internet, or on the side of a car.
Reflecting on the whole process of Chris Brogan and Kmart, or Aaron Brazell and Sears, is this so different from taking sponsorships that ride on the right side bar of your blog? Paid posts, paid commentary via Izea or Social Spark has become ingrained as the bad image of lone small audience bloggers hopping from paid post to paid post to make money on line. The question we are not asking ourselves is this different from what we would see in sports or in movies? The standard is that if you are a celebrity, this is one way of making money, and it works, otherwise advertising companies and corporations would not be doing this. It works, it is successful, why not try it in the blogosphere and see if the thought leaders of the day can also carry the internet fame into a new world of advertising.
When a blogger endorses a company for money, either through Izea or through a 125X125 box on their web site what is the real difference? Someone or some company is paying to have that box there, as much as they are paying for a post that is clearly label sponsored. The blogger is lending an air of credibility to the people they are sponsoring, if Seagate is good enough for Robert, then it might be worth looking in to, what about the read write web articles where they thank their sponsors? What about NASCAR or Basketball? What about celebrities that plug everything from shoes to soda to pimple removing cream, they are lending their good name to a company, hoping that people will purchase the product because of a celebrity endorsement. The same kind of advertising here works, it is not anything new, and it all boils down to a celebrity endorsement of a product. This is a time honored tradition, and companies that are willing to try the old model of celebrity endorsement into the age of blogging and citizen journalism is not that bad a thing.
Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Aaron Brazell, Michael Arrington, those are the social web’s American celebrities right now, and while they are not plugging soda or shoes, they are plugging things of interest to their audience. It is a highly targeted market, Michael Jordan plugs basketball shoes, NASCAR drivers plug brakes and drugs on their cars, why not have a technology blogger see where they can go with Kmart and Sears? What is the issue realistically, it is because it came from Izea, or is it because it somehow “dilutes the purity of blogging”.
Blogging has never been pure, we are all people with our own thoughts and biases, and we spin information to be what we want it to be. That is one of the reasons why there are so very few negative blog entries about a product or service in technology blogs. Everything is great, everything is the next big thing, everything solves all world problems, the reality is that there are some really crappy Web 2.0 applications out there; we just don’t talk about them like that. Rather we spin them to be the next greatest thing ever in the whole wide world why aren’t you using it yet?
The Kmart and Sears campaigns though Izea tapping the celebrity of Chris and Aaron actually makes sense in the world of sponsorships and endorsements. The problem is that while endorsements and sponsorships are common in just about every industry from NASCAR to Baseball, blogging and citizen journalism have not quite caught on to this one. Rather we look at it as evil rather than a necessary thing to do. Much like advertising on the internet, we look at bloggers that try to make money off their celebrity status as selling out; we disparage them on line and somehow think they have ruined the purity of what we are doing. Blogging has never been about purity, it has been about reaching out, is has been about having a voice, it is about leadership and conversation, sometimes horrifically nasty conversations that have shut people down from ever blogging again. It has been about control and image as far too many people got fired for blogging over the years, or sit in jails worldwide because of what they said about a government or religion.
Blogging is what you make of it, while we celebrate people like John Chow or Shoemoney for making five or six figures; we beat on someone like Aaron or Chris because they did a paid post for Izea. We cannot have it both ways, we get paid advertorials in the New York Times and other leading papers, why can’t we have the same on the blogosphere as long as we know it is a paid advertorial?
Tags: bloggers, sponsors, thoughts, izea, payperpost, money
