An Unfair Advantage?


With the blogosphere becoming increasingly influential and a lot of the big blogs a major media source, its easy to see why publicists are starting to reach out to more and more bloggers (especially since bloggers are more likely to respond to pitches).

But ladies and gents of the PR world, you know better than to pay off bloggers for coverage of you or your client's brand. Let me grab my megahorn and say this loud and clear: IT'S UNETHICAL.

Apparently Ann Taylor and their PR crew didn't get the message. Last week, Ann Taylor's LOFT line held a preview exclusively for bloggers and basically bribed them with gift cards in exchange for coverage of their line and the event. Their invite read:
Come take a sneak peak at LOFT's summer 2010 collection before anyone else! Bloggers who attend will receive a special gift, and those who post coverage from the event will be entered in a mystery gift card drawing where you can win up to $500 at LOFT!

But wait, it doesn't stop there. It gets better:

Please note all bloggers must post coverage from our event to their blog within 24 hours in order to be eligible. Links to post must be sent to [address], along with the code on the back of your gift card distributed to you at the event. You will be notified of your gift card amount by February 2. Gift card amounts will vary from $10 to $500.

Apparently, the promotion worked, but of course, bloggers failed to mention the fact that they had the chance to win a gift card for their "coverage."

It's hard to come up with PR tactics to draw people in to recognizing your brand, let alone get it exposure. Product PR is a tricky area to manage, but it is important to remember that PR people shouldn't sacrifice ethics (and neither should reporters) in order to reap benefits - in the end, that could surface as false promotion.


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