Companies Hire Bloggers for Promotion

[faviana]

Can online product reviews be relevant and credible when the authors are offered payments or freebies from the companies? The question has lately become a frequent topic in the country’s fast expanding blogosphere, which is increasingly embraced by the corporate world as an effective business tool.

The debate was sparked by the marketing efforts of Tatter & Media (TNM), an Internet company based in Seoul, which has been connecting a group of popular bloggers to companies willing to offer free products and services in return for reviews.

However, there are also observations that such changes are inevitable as blogging becomes mainstream, and seen as a medium for companies to get corporate messages across to the public.

About 20 bloggers participated in TNM’s recent marketing events with Samsung Electronics, where they were given some of the company’s latest mobile-phone models in exchange for a promised number of columns on their blogs.

TNM stresses that the bloggers were never pressed for word-of-mouth endorsements, and it never imposed on them any editorial guidelines other than that the Samsung phones must not be mentioned or compared with products from rival companies in the postings.

But critics wonder whether ethical thresholds have been crossed, considering that some of Samsung’s latest handsets cost more than one million won (about $687) on the shelves.

``When including taxes, Samsung’s T-Omnia touch-screen phone can cost around 1.2 million won for consumers,’’ wrote a blogger, who goes by the nickname ``Ara.’’

``By journalism standards, getting a phone like that would be seen as borderline graft.’’

Another popular blogger, named ``Little Lamb,’’ lamented that companies like TNM were making blogs more impersonal and corporate by recruiting online columnists to generate buzz for the products of client companies.

``When buying products, people tend to trust the offline opinions of friends or acquaintances more than the articles from traditional media outlets,’’ wrote the blogger.

``Naive or not, the postings of bloggers are generally trusted in the same way, and you have to at least say that TNM is taking advantage of those beliefs to stuff its wallet.’’

One of TNM’s most criticized bloggers is ``Hakjuni,’’ whose blog (poem23.com) is immensely popular for gadget reviews. In a recent posting, Hakjuni defended his recent reviews of the Samsung phones, claiming that his writing is rarely accused of being one-sided.

``The reviews of each blogger reflects personal opinion ― some would choose to focus on the innovations of the new product, while others would focus on the deficiencies,’’ wrote the blogger.

``The opinions on the review are open for debate, but unless a blogger is creating something out of thin air, it would be unfair to question the trustworthiness of the postings.’’

The controversy is linked to questions whether TNM, which calls itself a media company experimenting in decentralized, user-generated information models, is undermining its own credibility by blurring the lines between genuine postings and paid advertising.

Han Young, the chief executive of TNM, admits that the company’s member bloggers receive free products and occasional payments from sponsoring companies for reviews on their blogs.

However, he also points out that companies using bloggers for marketing is nothing new, although the public consciousness is just catching up, and stresses that TNM’s bloggers have established their reputation as technologists long before them were teamed up.

Unlike other Web sites relying on peer-to-peer models for content, TNM is run more like a closed community, with the company selecting around 100 of the more influential bloggers to link their postings to its site (www.tattermedia.com).

``It’s not like we can force bloggers to play by the same rulebook as professional journalists, and the independent nature of the blogs makes it impossible to enforce guidelines on them,’’ Han told The Korea Times.

However, Han said the company is discussing new guidelines to prevent further controversy, such as attaching bigger Web banners to the product reviews that explains to readers that the products have been sponsored.

[EngrishWithMichiko]

That's kind of interesting. I think it really depends on how they're portrayed in the blog. I don't think there's anything wrong with advertising things in your blog if you want to, and I do think Samsung's approach was interesting. It may take the personal element out of blogging, but since it's pretty much always done for the blogger's benefit (like a journal), it's really up to them. I personally skip over such portions of a blog, though, if they're obvious ads.

[anahigin]

I think this is a very common practice nowadays, bloggers are paid everywhere to advertise.

I'd still love to read reviews of products by paid 'bloggers', and determine for myself if the product is really good.

[auguster]

it can make problems because Korean usually think that blog is not commercial.
they think blog is personal and trivial and belive its post easily because they think that there isn't other object.
so it's dangerous for some Korean.

[jaggenheit]

Ew, corporations are going to taint my pleasure of blog reading.
I'll admit that it's a smart move by them.
Sigh... more advertisements I guess.