Digital Influence Mapping Project

3 "Watch-outs" About The FTC Guidelines and Blogger Outreach

A lot of people have been talking about the new FTC proposed guidelines and how they may impact social media marketers ability to outreach to bloggers. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (board member) had a great session on this with Tony DiResta attorney at Reed Smith (and formerly with the FTC) as part of our new Brands Council. members can access the presentation in the Members Center. Tony's summary of the impact:

• Advertisers are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or for failing to disclose a material connection between themselves and their endorsers.
• Endorsers may also be subject to liability for their statements.
• The communicator of the message must be transparent & honest.
• The FTC requires substantiation, or an appropriate basis for claims being made.

The FTC is more consumer-friendly today. They are not satified with the advertising communities efforts to self-regulate. You can be sure they will also be looking and taking some type of action in other areas as well like behavioral targeting. WOMMA has had a history of supporting only the best of practices within word of mouth marketing and social media marketing. We have routinely commented on the FTC proposals over the years and believe that marketers have a great opportuntiy to embrace the best, most ethical approaches to social media.

If marketers don't step up, they risk a more restrictive government regulation, and even worse, the pollution of word of mouth marketing whose core strength is based upon increased trust. 

Three "Watch-outs"

Full, proactive disclosure
The biggest implication of the new guidelines is the government's apparent readiness to regulate and demand what I would call full, practive disclosure of the relationship and terms of the arrangement between blogger and brand (or their agent).That means ensuring that any influencers (bloggers, facebook group owners, message board mavens) you outreach to in the hopes that they might share WOM about your brand or issue, fully disclose the terms and relationship they have with you. If you loan them a car to try the car, they need to say so. If you give them a laptop to try that laptop, they need to tell their followers that. Consumers need to know what exactly happened between marketer and influencer. That way they can make up their own mind as to the credibility and weight of the opinion.

It's not enough for the marketer to suggest that the blogger disclose.They need to make sure it happens and is "full" and proactive. Best practices in disclosure are being developed everyday to answer situational questions about things as arcane as whether I have to put (client) in every Tweet about a client event (I put it in some but not all. anyone following me will see that I have disclosed along the way multiple times). Our team at Ogilvy has developed a list of best practice "Full & Proactive Disclosure" guidelines to protect our clients and consumers. I would expect all social media marketers to do teh same.

Facts vs. Opinion

As The Metz summarized in his summary of the recent Adage article, bloggers who get the facts wrong about a product may be seen as making false claims:

"When a blogger (who is compensated either in product or cash) writes about something that is knowingly false, not only are brands liable, but so are the bloggers themselves. This extends to the public-facing areas of social networks like Facebook and MySpace...

...Here’s a fairly realistic example. You’re a tea company that sends out $50 boxes of tea for bloggers to review, citing that some of the enclosed products are organic. It turns out that one of the twenty bloggers screws up, and cites the entire product as organic. An organic competitor responds, and files an FTC complaint. Brand gets slapped with a $20k fine, and then sues blogger for damages. Under this proposed legislation, the blogger is indeed secondarily liable.

Here’s another example: Victoria’s Secret sends out free nylon thong underwear to 2000 Facebook users (young women 18-24 who have 500+ friends each, targeted as “influencers”). 2 of them make false statements about their new cotton underwear, and someone at Hanes alerts the FTC to a violation of the regulation. Victoria’s gets sued, and the buck eventually gets passed to the end-user..."

Is there a difference between bloggers who fully disclose a non-cash relationship with a brand in terms of their liability here? Well these guidelines remain in review and we will have to see what finally gets enacted. At the very least, brands will have to take extra steps to not only push influencers to fully disclose but to make a commitment to getting the facts straight. My personal opinion (this whole blog is that, by the way):  It may also come to pass that bloggers paid cash have a higher liability for themselves and brands with or without disclosure.

Cash May Be A Step Too Far
What's the difference between giving a blogger a new set of noise cancellation headphones to experience that product and potentially write about it and giving them cash. Both must fully disclose ("Company X gave me their product free and outright to try and left it up to me as to whether I would post on it and what I would say..."). Challenge is that the blogger paid in cash must write something. They do not have the option of saying nothing. Theoretically they can still come out with a negative review but that is unlikely. Paid reviews may simply be a step too far. They just do not activate true word of mouth. It is paid media in a format that may confuse the public (is this a paid placement or genine opinion?).

Word of mouth and social media marketing's strength lies in the trust we have for people like ourselves. Let's not do anything to diminish that trust. Or to push the FTC to do our job of protecting consumers and brands alike.      

Other Blogs on the FTC Guidelines:

• Consumer Reports - Federal Trade Commission to crackdown on deceptive testimonials

• AdAge Bloggers Be Warned: FTC May Monitor What You Say (requires subscription)

• FTC GUIDES CONCERNING USE OF ENDORSEMENTS AND TESTIMONIALS IN ADVERTISING

• PRWEEK - FTC proposal places marketers on alert

Helping Me Get Green Simply & Socially

A lot of brands are jumping on the bandwagon by embracing issues surrounding green, sustainability, and good-fo-the-environment. Agencies (including Ogilvy with the Greenery ) are setting up prcatices to better communicate 'greenness'. Some brands are sincere and have changed business practices to provide a more "green" approach and impact. Others just want the credit.

One thing many could explore is to help all of us citizens improve our personal impact on the environment. That means giving us tools or information that we can use. I doubt anyone believes this is anyone's job but rather will succed when we all do our part. Together we can win. And that is good news for most brands who want to build stronger bonds with their customers. By being of-use to us (customers) in terms of helping us to reduce our carbon footprint, for example, brands help us achieve something we find valuable. That's a brand-bonding opportunity.

Climate Culture Makes it Easy

Climate Culture is a Web2.0 social network-enhanced tool to help me reduce my family carbon footprint. It was developed by a group of Ivy League-plus grads and it's board of advisores is dominated by Yalie profs (oh, and Ed Begley - who apparently dropped the "Jr." from hsi name a while back).

On the surface, Climate Culture's main attraction appears to be a virtual representation of your world as an island. That's not the best thing it has going for it. In fact, that "virtual space" visual was one reason I was sure that I would hate it. 3D interfaces that mimic the space we breathe in are not good interfaces for most utility computing. When we were developing some of the earliest interactive TV shopping mall interfaces in 1991, we tried these 3D replicas of malls that were just horrible user experiences. Imagine if Amazon required you to walk down a hallway, open a door, "talk" to an avatar....you get the picture.

But Climate Culture's virtual island makes sense and, more importantly, doesn't suck. That's mostly because it's not the main interface. They use very simple and smart Web 2.0 menus. As you calculate your initial carbon footprint, you get to walk through a terrific list of tactics to reduce it. This list is magic. They are helping me think of ways to take actions - from big to small - and then giving me an idea of the impact. I earn points for answering questions and can reduce my footprint by acknowledging those things I already do or are willing to commit to doing.  (Not sure I can realistically 'reduce my Internet use' but that's only good for 51 lbs of CO2 a year whereas using a solar-powered lawnmower is good for 63).

What else could they do:

• Make the list more portable. I want to access in Facebook and on my Blackberry.

• Give me a way to challenge someone within the community or, more importantly, someone from the social Web to meet goals (e.g. "I bet I can earn 100o points by Friday...")
• Let me advocate for Climate Culture. Give me badges or apps to embed in my blogs et al.
• Create a sponsorable application for brands. Allow Brand X to show their support for Climate Culture and the mission of helping us all reduce our footprint while highlighting what they or their product contributes. 

Davos 09 - Where's the Digital Experience?

I realized that the World Economic Forum Davos conference was happening this past week when I read Michael Arrington's "spit post" last week. All week, I had been meaning to ap into the social media side of the event yet just didn't have time. Like last year, I was able to tap into their "Social Media" page and choose between their YouTube pages, their Twitter feed, Netvibes, Flickr, Qik, Mogulus, MySpace, Facebook page, their own video player page and more.

Need to Add "Guides"

With all of this availble content, I need a guide. I want to find all the content related to digital innovation. Could be a series of human guides that offer their 'playlist' of content. Could be a series of segmented tags that the crowd attending and creating content would use. Where's the Davos Delicious page? (I would have guessed "davos2009" as a good, all-purpose tag but there are only 12 tags there). Clearly there is a lot of traditoinal media coverage from FT.com and Time.com. I particularly like the page and coverage from the Huffington post. They serve as guides for the readers who have a close affinity for their editorial focus.  I am particularly interested in sessions and discussions about the impact and trends of "digital."

I am confident that I could piece this together and create a "guide" to digital-related issues/sessions/content. Since the WEC has done such a great job with getting digital content up there, the next step could be creating these effective "guides" - tools, people, data - that makes teh experience more naigable and relevant to more people.

Good Digital Session: The Next Digital Experience

Here is a decent session hosted by Michael Arrington with some of the usual "young founders" talking at first about mobile and then wandering around the innovations brought about by YouTube, Facebook, and, finally issues like privacy. Participants: Hamid Akhavan, Eric K. Clemons, Chad Hurley, Craig Mundie, Shantanu Narayen, Mark Zuckerberg. The session runs like a standard panel - they don't dip into questions from online, Twitter, et al. Good stuff in there and worth having on in the background.

tidbits:

Mark Zuckerberg - "People are becoming more and more comfortable sharing more..."

Eric K. Clemons (Wharton) - "My good friend, Jason Lanier, who pioneered virtual reality says that is so "last year." What we want is augmented reality..." where we get more information layered in on our lives.

Eric K. Clemons - "...Us, old guys, we  are not hiding from data we are hiding from push...which is a big problem for (marketers)..."

Social Media Books: A Strong Guide for Today's Communicators

I read a lot. Who doesn't these days. I read pretty much every book on social media out there (I read many other things as well - Design, Branding, Strategy, Business Innvovation, Fiction, Comic Books (re-reading Watchmen now). I periodically update my Amazon Reading List. I teach graduate school and routinely pick out the most useful books for class.

Anyhow, many of the social media books are not useful. Perhaps they are written quickly with little research or insight in order to get their authors into the speaking circuit and hopefully to more lucrative consulting careers. (If you are a great speaker with a great topic I am guessing that doing 30 speeches a year at $10K is a bit rough, and much harder to do today).

I read Tactical Transparency over the holiday break by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens. I was expecting another unoriginal speech-justifier (not due to any reputation issues, just a fatalist attitude I had at the time). What I got was a great synopsis of the significance and opportunities of social media for "business communicators" or corporate communications PR specialists.

I am not sure if there are new insights in the book beyond the umbrella proposition that "transparency" is a "critical business issue." This is certainly ground many, including Shel, have been talking about for years. But nowhere has anyone pulled the argument together so clearly and comprehensively as Tactical Transparency (here's their book site). Where Groundswell summarized again the phenomena that is social media marketing and became the replacement "textbook" for those who wanted to catch up quickly, Tactical Transparency does the same for corporate PR.

The Opportunity with Internal Communications

One of the richest parts of the book is their thinking and coverage of social media's impact and opportunity for employee relations and communications. Each of us works inside businesses comprised of a potential army of brand ambassadors or a silent population, or worse, grumbling legion of detractors. Too little attention is given to the potential of social media to unlock the potential of employees. I suspect that may be due in part to the lingering leadership of "traditional" communications experts in and around the C-suite who see employee communications as the least they can do to "control" messages.

The "One Book" for Business Communicators

Tactical Transparency is a great, catch-up guide to how social media impacts communications. If there was only one book you could read to learn (as you also apply social media to your life, of course), this is it. It is also perfect for the current generation of corporate comms PR person. As for the PR Professional of the Future you can see the ingredients I feel they will need going forward here. You can also get introduced to their boss, The Chief Marcom Customer Service Officer here.     

Three Social Media Updates from the Inauguration

Been on Twitter all morning with millions of others following along with the inaguration via the hashtag #inaug09. A great way to be involved. Meanwhile I wanted to post an update regarding three interesting digital & social media experiences:

1. Check out Wordle.net's view of the President's Inauguration speech (first time I wrote, "the President" meaning President Obama). Great visual way to form a text cloud.

2. Check out the new Whitehouse Web site. It just launched complete with a blog, a Contact Us page and a call to "participate" from the Office of Public Liason. A great bridge between "brand Obama" as expressed in the campaign and, later, Change.gov, and the official Presidency. 

3. Check out CNN's "the Moment" in a day or so. Using Microsoft's Photosynth and everyone's pictures snapped at 12:00 PM (or whenever the new presdient actually took oath), CNN will stitch together a crowdsourced photo experience. This takes the "Day in the LIfe..." photo projects to a new level.   

Can Bloggers Drive Peaceful Dialogue in the Middle East?

Our Johns Hopkins graduate class is doing a project with the group Seeds of Peace. They are trying to bring peace to the Middle East by hosting leadership programs for the next generation of Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Their model involves very immersive dialogue through camp experiences and a sustained conversation between people whose politics or culture stresses suspicion, hatred and intolerance. They belong in social media. Can they bring their sober approach to promoting discussion to the global blogs and social networks or is that such an uncontrolled environment that their careful and thoughtful approach won't work?

I am no political expert. No expert on world peace or on Mideast culture or politics. I am a citizen of the US, aspiring citizen of the world, blogger and marketing and communications expert. So understand that is my POV in my comments (which do not reflect the POVs of any of my affiliations or employers).

I remember watching the WeMedia conference from London in 2006. An Iranian blogger joined the session via satellite feed and spoke of tens of thousands of Iranian bloggers. I loved the idea that so many people within what we, in the West, always considerd a repressive regime, could be finding a way to express their personal opinions online. Having met many bloggers from around the world, I have a naive belief that having so many individuals talking and meeting online will, in its own way, contribute to peace. I love reading Global Voices Online for all the variety of people blogging around the world.

Iranian BlogFather, Hoder, Arrested

Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder), an Iranian blogger, has apparently been arrested by the Iranian government and been accused of spying on behalf of Israel. You can sample the various stores about this event below (it would be a step in the right direction if Iranian news source Jahan News had an English-language version as I would like to understand their POV - couldn't find stories in Aljazeera either):

• Iran Executes Man in Spy Case, and Blogger’s Arrest Is Reported - NY Times

• Iranian Blogger Hossein Derakhshan Arrested - Huffington Post

• Iranian blogger arrested 'as Israeli spy' - The Guardian

• Iranian blogger arrested as Israeli spy - Jerusalem Post

Now Hoder has been supportive of the Iranian government (specific people and maybe not some others) and is not the traditional critic gone too far (okay, maybe he criticized the wrong person but he is reported to be a patriot for Iran). He traveled to Israel. He posted POVs that humanized Israelis bucking the dogma that demonized them in many pro-Iranian publications. He remained super-critical of the US government's attempt to hurt Iran. 

I cannot know what Hoder did or did not do. But it makes me think about the role that social media can play in terms of promoting discussion across cultures and borders. Hoder has two blogs - one in English and one in Persian. He is making an effort to communicate beyond his borders. To my knowledge, he is not inciting violence even while he voices provocative ideas. 

While Seeds of Peace brings young leaders-to-be together to confront their bias and learn compassion and understanding, can this be extended by hosting or supporting sustained conversations online via blogs and social networks? Those same people who come to the Seeds experience are best equipped to have those conversations with bloggers from Iran, Iraq, Israel - you name it. Or is the blogosphere too wild a place to have sane discussions about such heartfelt and passionate issues?  Just as Seeds uses a tremendous amount of expertise to have safe and rational conversations in the camp experience, is there any way to have the same online?

The first step is to not persecute bloggers - if that is what is happening to Hoder.

DNC Tweets

 

From the Twitter blog:

Huffington Post is covering their collective experience via a funny and often revealing Twitter feed. It is well worth subscribing to here. You get gems like:

"The Rolling Stone party sucked worse than a vacuum cleaner. I swear I'm not just saying that because police escorted me out of it! -AlGi "

and:

"according to kathy lash, clooney to make appearance at GQ party -alisavino"

Also be sure to follow the #dnc08 hashtag for everyone's tweets.....

From Web 2.0 Olympics to Web 2.0 Democratic Convention

We're on a roll with these mega-events in terms of Web2.0 and social media integrating into the experiences to add unique value. And these aren't even geek conferences - they are mainstream. While we wind down our Olympics blogging  and vlogging activity, the Democratic Convention is in it's final build-and-prep stages in Denver (just came back from Denver last night - the corporate parties are heating up - we're helping out a couple of doozies).

Thanks to NewTeeVee - my favorite feed on Web video, I found Ustream's live feed from the conference floor. Right now you can watch the construction of the Big Tent. But once that tent is up here's what you can expect:

"The Big Tent will be a gathering place for new media journalists and bloggers, as well as home to the Digg stage, which will feature speakers such as T. Boone Pickens, John Conyers and DailyKos’ Markos Moulitsas."

Other coverage:

C-Span has a new video site  calleed the Convention Hub featuring cgm (check out this cool Qik video of them installing the "Hope" sculpture which I didn't even know existed)

ABC News (another sign things have changed is the focus on teh medium - check out how all the in-crowd waits for a text message of the VP selection) and MSNBC.com (check out their Decision Dashboard)  will have live coverage

The Huffington Post is going upsacle by hosting a panel at The Brown Palace featuring: Chad Hurley, Will.i.am; Arianna, George Stephanopoulos, Katharine Weymouth, Rep. Rahm Emanuel and  Saturday Night Live's Fred Arminsen

The DNCC blog site will have coverage and on top of that, they held a video contest - Why Are You  A Democrat in 2008. The winner - Rich Peters - is going to teh convention and his video will be shown on teh big screen!

Good Changes

The added dimension of bloggers, vloggers, side-events through multiple voices is doing a tremendous amount to make these events more intersting, personal and in an unexpected way, may be filling the hole left behind by the market consolidation of media. We can actually hear multiple POVs again.

Our government is too big not to get social media

There is an interesting conversation going on within our 360° Digital Influence team blog sparked by a post from Brian Giesen regarding the death of Web 1.0 for government. The question of whether our government gets social media or fundamental issues around the Internet is a false question. There is no monolithic "government." There is a diverse collection of people across different agencies and departments, most of who are trying anything they can do their jobs better. That includes exploring and adopting social media. I don't find the institutional inertia inside government agencies any thicker than many corporations.

There is lots of evidence that individuals throughout government are exploring and becoming expert with how to use social media productively. While there is plenty of evidence that others are struggling. In such a big ecosystem like "government" that is completely understandable.

Technology is complicated

Today's Washington Post Business section covers the hearings yesterday garding Internet privacy in relation to data mining and ad targeting. The story was in the print edition and I cannot find it online but the intersting points were:

• one Congressman citing the use of the term "cookies" and feeling the need to learn a new dictionary
• the general sense that the discusison aqbout technology, data and privacy in realtion to Internet advertising was too complex to really understand within the scope of the session

But the campaigns lead the way

Both parties are using social media to the fullest. That's common knowledge. It's not just the 2 big candidates but plenty of the others who run every year that are deep into the tools, communities and methodologies of social media and just good use of the Web.

• Obama for America
• John McCain for President
• Josh Hallet on local campaign sites
• Jerry Weinstein at The Huffington Post on the Personal Democracy Forum

And then they get elected

Look at Robert Scoble's trip to the Hill this past month. he found plenty of folks who "get it" including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. See his video collection here.

Social Media and the World Bank

Pierre Wielezynski, a Communications Officer at The World Bank, and I presented to a great group of Internet pros from all over DC - government, non-profit, and commercial companies. Pierre offered tons of insight about what it means to be a social media evangelist inside an organization bolted as tight as The World Bank.

He has really accomplished a tremendous amount. Just last month he was in his Japan office training folks on some of the fundamentals that will help them in their jobs. (Our Japan Digital Influence team stopped in to share our POV and experiences).

He started by pointing out how other advocacy organizations were making big ripples or great starts including:

• One: the cause to allocate 1% of the US budget to fight AIDS and extreme poverty
• Greenpeace: primarily how they offer easy-to-tag 'Tag This Campaign' features
• Change.org: their feature that allows you to type in the plights you would like to solve in the world. The tag cloud generated by this simple tool inventories a lot of the issues the bank is focused on from "Sustainable food sources" to "ending global poverty"
• Good Search: every search can send pennies to a worthy cause.
• Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger: where use of the instant messenger delivers ad revenue to causes
• Kiva: allowing each of us to participate in micro-lending

His point? All this is going without the World Bank. Personally, I don't think he gives himself enough credit. His evangelism, his willingness to do a preso like this in front of 150 people from all sorts of agencies with his boss in the front row, and his willingness to be frank and open about what the Bank is and is not doing will likely do a lot to push the organization along.

700 vs. 20,000 Outlets

He made a terrific point with his slides showing their traditional communications effort (press realeases et al) over 4 months which generated 13,000 news mentions from 700 outlets - mostly traditional media.

Compare that with over 32,000 mentions from 20,000 blogs many of which were critiquing (okay, lambasting) the Bank. The Long Tail meets lack of control.

Ultimately his point is that we have to move from the Communications 1.0 model  - "disseminate polished messages to people" - towards a new model where our job is to "help staff communicate"

The World Bank Blog Makes Little "Bangs"

Yes, they have one. It is the Private Sector Development Blog which is gaining popularity. And there are real people behind it who readers can get to know and trust. This small effort is a giant step in the right direction. The direction? As he put it, we need to move away from the Big Bang theory of communications  - where we are trying to get that colossal clip (we here that all the time - "get us on The Today Show, Oprah, WSJ"). And we should move towards lots of little bangs like the ones created by this blog. 

Here's how the blog describes itself:

"The Private Sector Development Blog (PSD Blog) gathers together news, resources and ideas about the role of private enterprise in fighting poverty. The blog is informal and represents the quirks and opinions of the bloggers, not the World Bank Group."

The authors are all introduced on the same page.

There were many other agencies in the audience from The State Department to Homeland Security to the White House. They would all be lucky to have a smart enthusiast like Pierre pushing them forward into a participatory approach to communications vs. command-and-control. The fact that they were all there for our session on developing social media strategy was a good sign in and of itself.