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Loading ...Yesterday I hopped over to Chris Kieff’s blog, 1 Good Reason, and came upon an excellent post that sparked a discussion both online and off. I ended up talking to Chris and five others about what likely is to be a major problem in the upcoming years regarding online marketing and PR, especially through the social media lens. The five were Jen Zingsheim, Bryan Person, Dave Evans, Jake McKee, and Mark Davidson.
I’ll start by saying that I think often that those of use who practice social media are, if not naive, very idealistic in our thinking on the principles we espouse. And I’d say that a confluence of emerging trends, mindsets, events, and business practices could come back and knock a lot of us on our asses.
What caught my attention from Chris’ blog was his interaction with a young woman who had been hired as a blogger by a clothing company:
Yesterday at Social Media Camp NYC hosted by Mashable, and Yoono, there was a very lively discussion started by a young woman who presented herself as a “Persona Blogger.” She was joined in this discussion by a company (who I have decided to not name, yet) who is employing her to blog for them.
She discussed how she assumes the persona of several people; 52 year old woman, 25 year old man, 20-ish woman, and then blogs, twitters, and creates pages on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and others as these people. She spoke about how this is a 24/7 job that requires her to maintain this work constantly to keep up the facade.
I’ll not mince words, this is simply lying, and as I’ve stated in this blog before, lying is a terrible way to build a relationship.
The audience at SM Camp NYC seemed to divide somewhat along generational lines, with some of the younger people taking the side that it’s understood that people can’t be trusted on the internet. Their arguments followed the logic that everyone on the internet makes things up. They’ve grown up understanding there are different levels of honesty.
I chose to highlight that last sentence because it’s very problematic. It’s both true and bullshit. Honesty, by definition would seem to be an absolute. But people, out of convenience have altered it to fit their needs and circumstances. We all do it. I’ve done it. We rationalize. We justify. That’s life. We’re human. But there’s consequences.
What stuck me is Chris’ point on the outlook of the attendees regarding the concept of the “persona blogger”. It “seemed to divide somewhat along generational lines” My concern here is more through the aspect of looking through the eyes of practitioners as opposed to potential audience members.
How Did This Come About?
Consider the following:
1) We’ve had a President of the United States, someone who often sits atop the “Ten Most Admired Men in the World” surveys, who by his very position is a role model for our nation’s youth, recklessly having an extramarital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter. He then lies to cover it up and attempts to position the woman as delusional and, if not a stalker, somewhat obsessed. Oops, a blue dress appears with a certain stain on it, and, well, it turns out he did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. We’re then told that this really doesn’t matter, it’s only an affair, and of course he lied under oath, but so what?
Say what you want about it, but I’ll say it tarnished the Office of the Presidency and it demeaned the institution of marriage. Meaning, it lowered the standards of what we expect out of our leaders and it created different levels of honesty.
2) So let’s fast forward a couple of years. Wall Street. Greed is Good. Irrational exuberance. Brokerage houses telling their brokers to push certain stocks. Outright lies. A couple of companies went under, a couple of people went to jail, but more importantly thousands lost their life savings because a few who were already rich got even more greedy.
In a lot of cases, the amounts measured up to a couple of days profits. Those brokerage houses still exist, still treat themselves as noble entities, still are looked upon by the business media as having thought leaders.
From this, we subtly learn not to trust institutions…but often those same institutions are the only ones out there.
3) If you’re Catholic, like me, you soon found out that the very people who represent God before your very eyes are not only failing to protect the most innocent, they are covering up the grievous sins of their subordinates. On a national scale. For some (no, not me) it was as much as part of the Church as a sacrament. Nothing is sacred.
4) Speaking of presidents, we’re now at war in Iraq because they have weapons of mass destruction they likely have ties to al Queda to spread democracy in the Middle East. We’ll be greeted as liberators and then we’ll be out of there in a few months, where we can say “Mission Accomplished”. The war will pay for itself with Iraqi oil money.
Oops. We don’t need more troops. We don’t torture. We’re in the last throes of the insurgency.
What we’ve seen with all of this - and it’s coming out in memoirs of administration aides - is that there was a huge propaganda campaign coming out of said administration, pushing falsehoods on practically everything. Dissent within the administration was squelched and that attitude seemed to spread around the country. Ask the Dixie Chicks. The media often went along for reasons only they know.
In my conversation with Jake McKee, he pointed out how many of today’s young people don’t question authority. They may not follow it blindly, they may just accept that they are going to be lied to.
So it’s been reinforced that it’s OK to fudge the truth and dissent is often bad.
5) Like sports? Like steroids? This generations’ greatest hitter and greatest pitcher are heavily believed to have been juiced up. As were Olympic hopefuls, past Gold medal winners, and Tour de France winners. Toss in souped up cars in NASCAR and Formula 1 and you’ve got cheaters everywhere. Whatever it takes to win. The end justifies the means. If he’s on our team, that’s cool, as long as he produces. People may fall from grace, but that’s after winning millions of dollars.
What we learn here is that it’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose.
I’m not writing all this to shove down your throats moral standards or to condemn society or to shame us as role models for our nation’s youth or to point out how young people are going to be less ethical than we are.
I’m writing this instead to shove down your throats that, at the very least, we’re likely going to have to deal with some serious issues in the near future. Those same standards fo authenticity and transparency may not be worth snot. I’ll further explain in How Social Media Will Get Screwed, Part Two.
Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC, Authenticity, Blog Policies, Blog Strategy, Blog Training, Blog of Personality, Blogger Code of Conduct, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Ethics, Blogger Gifts, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogger Response, Blogger Support, Blogging, Blogging Policies, Blogosphere, Blowback, Controversial Marketing, Social Meda, Transparency
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Wow. Nicely put together stream of thoughts. I wholly agree that moral standards are shifting, and in my opinion, not in a positive direction.
You’re addressing 2 things here. First is a willingness to act dishonestly for personal gain (whether monetarily, egotistically, reputationally or for some other type of gain). Second, is an acceptance of a slipping sense of right and wrong.
Certainly, this kind of duplicity has always happened, but in this day and age, it seems to either exist on a much larger scale, or is at least more visible. I guess the question here is, did this ALWAYS happen, but somehow it was kept hidden away in dark closets, or is this something new?
Second, I personally, I believe this shift in thinking is happening because each successive generation drifts farther away from any kind of moral anchor. Believe in them or not, respect them or not, Christian morals acted as a very visible moral standard, or perhaps even a goal. As religion has less and less influence on people in general, so do its moral standards.
What do we base our morals on now? Whatever we want? That’s going to be the big puzzle to figure out moving forward. If we’ve rejected one thing, what do we replace it with? Certainly not laws. Laws enforce morals. Society is going to have to come to grips with the fact that for the most part, it has no moral anchor and will need to try and deal with that.
Hi Chris…wonderful post–but I think the problem might be a bit simpler, on some level, than how you state it.
The young woman in question has, quite possibly, never sat through a presentation by Toby Bloomberg or Celeste Lindell on their “character bloggng” experiences. She’s probably also not aware of the conversations that have been circulating for some time now about transparency, civility, and pseudonymous blogging.
And probably neither are her superiors.
In effect, someone’s charged a very young person with a task because they knew the young person would think this to be fun, would not question being asked to blog in a personna, and may be totally ignorant of either the good or bad consequences of doing such.
Honestly, is seems that there’s very little educating of young people–and even sometimes of experienced marketing and p.r. people–on what’s already happened in social media, the consequences, and how it should or shouldn’t be used, etc. It breaks down generationally, in part because the older generation assumes a younger generation to have a facility with social media and that the facility, without the knowledge of issues pertaining to social media, is far more important to what they’d like to accomplish.
They may even be more interested in spoofing people with the new medium to reach their goals than they are in true conversations with customers.
From the sound of it, they’re certainly interested in taking advantage of a young person by not educating her and working her to the quick.
When there’s no passing along of the lessons already learned, then many will simply repeat the mistakes of the (rather immediate) past. And eventually the kid will quit.
In defense of the woman who participated in Social Media Camp NY, an event I attended and a woman who I met, I must say that she is very much a Method Blogger. While she very well does have a middle-aged woman “character” for her New Jersey store blog and does have a Yogic character for the yoga studio, she does spend hours and hours answering comments, responding to requests, and really engaging and following up and responding and relating to the people she is engaging with.
She is playing a part and meeting a need. She is a pretty, young, woman and when she is representing a site wherein a 50-year-old woman might make the visitors feel more comfortable, what is the harm in that?
Mind you, that’s not how we do it here at Abraham Harrison. I spend three years doing stealth marketing in message boards and forums from 2003-2006 and then moved on to major PR firm that was accused of astroturfing, so there is no way I am willing to ever put my company into a place where this whole controversy might explode.
I think what could solve all of this is what Hollywood has been doing for years: blogs being maintained by Marvin the Robot from Hitchhiker’s Guide, while being amazingly responsive and quite a good blogger, is obviously fictional.
People, while still having loads of fun interacting with Marvin in his blog and in his comments section, realized, mostly, that the blogger behind the robot, a staff person from the company I was working for back in 2005, was just an actor.
At that point, when we all know that this “persona blogger” is “merely acting,” I think we can realize that all of this is mostly harmless.
This is a very timely discussion and post as someone asked me today if I got paid to promote a DVD/movie that is one of those “ehh” movies– got great stars but who really had a lousy script, performance, direction going on.
I just said if you have nothing else to watch, and are sick of reruns, it’s better than nothing but was candid about the performances. But the commenter seemed to think that I should have crucified the movie. I have seen worse movies than the one I was writing about.
. I didn’t feel the need to call a movie a pile of dog doo-doo to make the point. Given that it was my shortest review for that site, it says something about the quality of the movie.
Honesty and integrity are important– transparency needs to be pretty much that– though there are shades of grey there. In Social Media/ Web 2.0, and in life in general for the millenial generation (separate blog post coming on that ), there is some questions about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
When I am working with a client, I do try to make things as transparent as possible. I won’t lie and tell people I think a product is fabulous. However if someone else does think so– and it’s an independent consumer– then it’s not up to me to take them to task.
What’s interesting here is that people are assuming their perspective is the right one– while I might write about a beauty product that I have personally tried, think it’s great and well worth buying, there is another person out there who thinks what I am writing is spam -though I have not been paid by the company, pr or anyone to write about it. (begging the question, how can it be spam? )
When one is representing themselves as multiple people (ages, genders etc) and the company is encouraging the blogger to do that, it’s *wrong* to keep that up. That’s not transparent, translucent and in an office environment, would be grounds for firing or could be labeled fraud.
The commentary about the government and relationships, events and all that comes after is a different topic and really deserves its’ own space. Howevermuch I agree with you Chris (and I really do), it’s a slightly different discussion that needs its’ own space. (and lots of it).
Stevie Wilson
And, to be honest, being open, honest, and transparent works for us. I mean, when a 50-year old woman goes into, let’s say, a yarn store, that woman doesn’t expect to see someone who physically mirrors her, she expects good service and maybe some expertise, at the very least, and that sales woman may well be a sales girl. I learned long ago when I was with Caucus Systems that one doesn’t need to look like someone or be like someone or have the shared experience of someone to be able to both mirror and service them.
Thanks much for the shout out.
Marvin
Blogging as a *character* such as a robot, or, as in the case of one of my friends, the 50ft. Woman (from “Attack of…”) can be fun. However, if the company is looking to really connect with customers, why use a character? That’s like doing customer service in a Halloween mask.
And eventually, savvy folks will figure out the false-face. There are syntax cues out there that differentiate 50 year old experience/speech from 20 something speech. Also, it is often easy to tell a stock photo from a real photo. And nobody believes the “face” of an avatar.
Also, Chris, you keep mentioning the “pretty, young” aspect. Do you realize that your comments are a bit agest as well as sexist? can’t there be “pretty” women in middle age who are just as qualified? Or is it more that “pretty” and “young” imply a certain amount of not questioning of authority figures and thus following the marketing firm’s “mission”?
First off, this is from Jonathan, the guy that wrote the original post. I gotta make my sig bigger. : )
I wasn’t in the audience that Chris Kieff and Chris Abraham were in so I’m not privy to her blog or the way she positioned it. I have nothing against “character blogs” as long as they’re blatantly obvious.
I do see a lot of harm in someone creating a fake persona. Readers rely on a persona insight and knowledge base.
I’m glad to see I got a conversation going here. This is a concept I’m going to push. Michael Arrington and Jeremy Pepper have two insightful articles out there on how PR is broken. I think, given the nature of social media, it could get worse for both advertising and PR as mainstream marketing companies enter the arena.
To Stevie: I disagree with your contention that the reference to the Clinton scandal is somewhat separate from the greater point. And I put it this post to get reactions like yours. The overall point was that we all - and especially impressionable young people have witness a lot of ethical violations of some sort from public figures (and I don’t care if it’s “private behavior - they still play larger roles in society than making policy) to religious institutions to major corporations that employ a lot of people and can affect markets. That stuff leads to the desensitizing and cynicism that we see. How then do we expect people entering the industry to follow guidelines?
So, yep, all of this stuff adds up.
Tish, I don’t know how to answer this. I have written a couple responses but I didn’t submit one and then deleted another.
I have been friends to people of all ages forever. I have friends from 20s-70s and don’t discern. Ever. I cut my teeth on the Well, The Meta Network, and Brainstorms as well as USENET, MOOs and MUDs. Nobody knows how old someone is who they are physically, but you do get to learn their hearts.
When it comes to hiring someone, I can only hire people I know and people who I can find. I think the biggest problem with being able to place true people in blogging positions instead of using people like the above-mentioned persona-blogger is because you can’t always find them.
Where are they? People look for services and they look for solutions. They also want something that is affordable and simple and so going to a blogger service for blogging services is the way people go.
Also, my fave blogger is Jonathan Trenn. For this sort of space, Jonathan is Jonathan and he’s not pretending to be anyone else.
I thing people generally don’t know that they might be able to hire their favorite client or customer as a corporate blogger. They also think they need their CEO to blog and that CEO doesn’t want to blog, so the blog gets ghost-written by either a consultant by someone on the staff.
People are just looking for solutions. I know for a fact that the “pretty, young” woman who I met, the persona blogger, loves blogging for a Yoga studio the most because Yoga is her passion. But, she can’t be a Yoga blogger enough just now to support a life in NYC.
What she plans to do, at the end of the day, is expand her business so that she can broker lots and lots of topically-passionate bloggers to the blogs that need them.
Right now, she needs to wear all the hats, but I think down the road, she can specialise, diversify; also, she is unwilling to take on gigs that she can’t make fly — she doesn’t want to do autoblogs or highly-technical blogs for topics, products, and services she can’t get into.
She also told me that she really gets into her personas and goes up and over the number of hours she bills in the course of a week to keep on top of the conversation.
At the end of the day, what is more important: personalized service and support and a willing ear — an amazing experience but with a Stage Name, or either a brochure-ware site or a dead-in-the-water semi-abandoned blog with the comments turned off?
Even our pretty young persona blogger is going to be replaced more and more by offshored virtual assistants and staffing. We have explored that ourselves for other reasons and have found that there is a lack of America-specific enculturation, but that will be less and less obvious the more and more these virtual assistants work on their western cultural personas.
And, yes: of course there are gorgeous and brilliant middle-aged women — especially in social media and PR. I would name names but they would kill me! And since I have been attending Renaissance Weekend since 2001, I can assure you that there are gorgeous, brilliant, sexy, powerful, and self-realized women who are well into their 80s, and you can quote me on that!
In terms of my sexism and ageism, I am neither sexist nor ageist; however, I did use sexist and ageist language and I appologise for that, that’s for sure, Tish.
“First off, this is from Jonathan, the guy that wrote the original post. I gotta make my sig bigger. : )”
Hell, I should just call this, “Marketing Conversation with Jonathan Trenn” — the reason why people get confused is because I ping Twitter on my account the moment anything is posted. We need to work on a new and better solution.
Thank you, Chris, for the apology–and yes, I read your bio some time ago, so I’m familiar with your accomplishments…
yet I also understand how, when communicating in a space that does not allow for vocal inflection or body language, that the words we use can convey things about us that aren’t necessarily true.
So, in a sense, I wanted to get to some truth about you–and I thank you for that.
Jonathan and I have crossed paths before as well–and I think he and I have always been in agreement about character blogs and fake personnas.
Eventually, many of the “blogs” that are ghost-written will probably vanish, and many of the companies playing around with social media because they are feeling the need to do so–without fully understanding it–will either leave the space or re-think their social media plans. At that point, they might begin to bring in folks who can help them gain a better understanding of it rather than grasping for whatever immediate–and perhaps reputation-damaging–strategy presented itself in their particular pinch.
Let’s face it: most people who get social media have been around it for awhile. Even then, mistakes are made.
Where all of this will go, though, only time will tell.
You’re welcome, Tish; and, thank you. I hope it doesn’t end up going, “there’s a sucker born every day.”
oh, and a simple solution to mis-atribution via Twitter: simply post something to the effect of “new post by Jon @…….” however you want to state the last part, then post the link. Don’t think anyone will be turned off or not want to read because they see Jon’s name. People will get it.
Chris has set up a system where he gets all the credit. And he gets all the pretty, young girls too. : )
In all honesty, he brings a lot of traffic into this site on Twitter. I’ll probably have to just start every post with “by Jonathan Trenn”.
With regards as to how this ends up…that’s my concern. Traditional ad agencies pop into social media by trying to shove down marketing message down people’s throats. That’s usually not appropriate.
My guess is that PR firms will do the same.
Well, I don’t want any of the credit!