They operate out of public view - in the shadows - where they trade their growing influence for perks including trips, merchandise, and experiences not offered to "average" people. They even have a name, known only among a select circle of power brokers: "The Eleven."
Who are these people? Washington lobbyists? Characters in a new John Grishman novel? No - they are a niche group of opportunistic Mommy Bloggers, and they are for sale.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But if there were such a thing as a code of ethics in blogging - this exploding trend that blurs the line between marketing and blogging would be much more transparent. As it is now in the wild, wild world of the blogosphere - anything goes!
The full story of "The Eleven" moms panel is told this week in Advertising Age. The Eleven were chosen and assembled by Wal-Mart stores, which paid for 11 Mommy bloggers to travel last month to the store's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters in order to participate in a "Salon Secret" panel. As AdAge explains, "the idea was to have the mommy bloggers...be treated with an unnamed 'salon brand,' to be revealed as Pantene. A sampling site for the launch notes that 70% of salon-brand users prefer the mystery brand."
And of course, the Mommies then go home and blog about it in a positive light - spreading the good word among their countless readers and creating a viral buzz worth millions to P & G and Wal-Mart. And although one member of The Eleven, Katja Presnal - who runs the Skimbaco.com online retail site and SkimbacoLifestyle blog - tells AdAge that she isn't paid with money for her positive posts, one can't deny that these particular mommies are benefiting from their blogging - although she does have a limited offer of "free samples" on her blog.
But the story of The Eleven doesn't stop there. As AdAge also points out, "the Bentonville experience also included a trip to the Campbell's Soup test kitchen and offices of Coca-Cola Co. and Kellogg Co., where the moms weighed in favorably in advance of the latter's marketing program in cooperation with Wal-Mart to tout the value of its cereal at only 50 cents per bowl. They also got to stop by one of the retailer's famed Saturday-morning meetings, which featured appearances by Harrison Ford and CEO Lee Scott, who donned one of Mr. Ford's hats from 'Indiana Jones.'"
In Washington, they have a not-so-favorable name for this kind of business: influence peddling. In the marketing world however, they are benignly called a focus group.
And in the wake of last week's Motrin-gate, the influence wielded by certain mommy bloggers is something corporations and marketers are both terrified of getting on the wrong side of -- and anxious to coddle and please.
Curiously, as AdAge also reports, the recent Motrin fuss involving Mommy bloggers and Twitterers including the aforementioned Katja Presnal, did little or no damage to Johnson and Johnson outside the Mommy blogger world. However, as a test case in social media, it proved invaluable.
But to many bloggers who also happen to be moms - myself included - Motrin-gate did more to hurt our circle than to help it. Erin Kotecki Vest, who writes the QueenofSpainBlog, said it best when writing "right or wrong, the rest of the web is now rolling its eyes, again, at our community. What happened...went from smart, powerful activism to Palin-rally lynch mob."
So what of the mysterious "Eleven?" How do you know what you're reading isn't paid for in favors? You don't. There are no editors, ethics panels or fact-checkers. It's up to the blogger whether to be honest about what they might have received in exchange for their positive posts -- or not. There are no disclosure rules in the blogosphere.
But if it looks like marketing, reads like marketing and smells like marketing ---- it probably is marketing.
Wise Ideas Disclosure: I was sent two bottles of MomSpit once as a "thank you" for a blog I wrote about the viral success of this small company started by a couple of moms. I gave the 8oz. bottle away as a gift, and the 2oz. bottle remains in the bottom of my purse for "emergencies." Other than that, I'm clean.
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