So Walmart’s PR agency started a travelogue blog intended to generate word-of-mouth buzz for the big box megacenter. But they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar:
From Paid Content.org: Even in the new world of alleged disintermediation, public relations firms still want to play the gatekeeper role. Edelman PR has been one of the companies working hard to stay relevant despite the new reality in which its clients have less control over what is said publicly about it. But last week, it became clear that Edelman had pulled a classic online mistake, producing a travelogue blog for Wal-Mart without revealing who was paying for it. (The old site has been taken down except for a defensive front page. Those who want the history can thank Google Cache.) After the usual blogger outrage, Richard Edelman has now apologized on his blog. He says he accepts responsibility (”I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client’s.”)
It’s awesome how much power the people can have in the blogosphere. We had our first taste of this dynamic recently when we discovered a fan who was creating video blogs about the Colts. Nick-named “Zack Legend,” this enthusiastic, season ticket holder was creating homemade videos of his game day experiences and posting them to Youtube and promoting himself on myspace. He had accumulated a friendlist of over 500 people.
So we invited him to share his videos with the team website http://www.colts.com/sub.cfm?page=zacklegend and the minute he hit the airwaves, fans in our forum starting a thread. They thought for sure Zack was an actor, and it wasn’t sitting too well with them. Thankfully, one of Zack’s friends jumped into the thread and pointed the mob toward some of Zack’s previous work which proved he was a real Colts fan, and not a hired hand. That seemed to satisfy the crowd.
Now we’ve invited other Colts fans to send us their videos. This is where we wanted to go anyway, but boy you do need to be careful not to step over the line. If someone’s blogging on your site be sure to tell everyone - up front - who he is and why he’s there.
