Marketing Roadmaps

Fake/Fictional Blogs

Marketing Roadmaps Round Up

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From Joho: comment on a fictional blog from Audi. Since Cluetrain is the “bible” for many of the most vocal opponents of character blogs, and any blog form that isn’t by “real people,” I’m pleased that one of the authors seems to have an open mind on the subject. I do disagree with his terminology (faux blog); faux means false, and false or fake for me requires intent to deceive. I would call this blog a fictional blog, as it tells a fictional story using the blog form. And as Dave points out, good or bad is determined by the target audience; it is all relative.

Quick Link: Dave Taylor at the Intuitive Life Business Blog tells us about Your Daily Art, a unique small business blog.

What’s a blog?

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Shel Holtz posted a plea to the blogosphere to Stop defining blogs:

"I’m getting tired of people insisting that blogs are one thing but definitely cannot be another."

Me too Shel. 

There’s room for more than one approach. I think that to insist that there is only one right way is well, clueless.

I also take offense at the idea expressed by some bloggers that those of us who allow for more than one right way to blog, to engage, to go to market, should get off the Train. That we are wrong.

That attitude strikes me as simply replacing one bad model, the much maligned old-style corporate marketing fortress, with another equally intransigent one:

"You can see the politics of ‘being right’ throughout most organizations. People win arguments- and thus secure their position in the hierarchy- through the cutting remark, through megatonnage of evidence, through agreeing with industry consultants, and through the smug refusal to ever admit being wrong."

– from The Cluetrain Manifesto

Hmmm. 

Flogging a dead horse & BusinessWeek

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So, did you hear? BusinessWeek just did a cover story on blogging 🙂

By and large, it was a good article, and definitely a nice overview for someone who had heard a bit about this "blogging thing."

At the risk of being accused of "flogging" a dead horse, I really only took exception to one thing — the somewhat misleading definition of fake blogs:

"FAKE BLOGS, SOMETIMES CALLED FLOGS
Fake blogs created by corporate marketing departments to promote a service, product, or brand. The flog’s writer often uses a fake name. Derided by bloggers, fake blogs are an increasing trend. McDonald’s created a flog to accompany its Super Bowl ad about the mock discovery of a french fry shaped like Lincoln, while Captain Morgan created a fake blog in March for its Rum drinks."

This definition perpetuates the problem that Neville Hobson identified last week — inconsistent definitions of what we are talking about when we say fake blog, character blog, fictional blog.

It also perpetuates a negative stereotype of corporate marketing departments, almost making it sound as though all blogs created by marketing would be fake blogs. Not at all true. We have already seen some good examples of corporate blogs – among them GM FastLane and Stonyfield Farms, both covered in the BusinessWeek article. Not to mention: an individual could just as easily create a fake blog, as a Roadmaps reader pointed out last week.

So how should we define these different types of blogs — fake, character, fictional etc. Neville’s definitions are a good start. Here they are (from the same post linked above):

"A character blog means a blog which appears to be written by a fictional person. An example might be a blog that’s authored by a toy – Barbie, let’s say. Or by a brand – Captain Morgan’s Rum may be a good example.

A fake blog is one that appears to be like a character blog yet the conversation is fake in that comments (for example) are not what they appear to be nor written by genuine people. An example might be the McDonald’s Lincoln Fries blog."

And here are my additions:

The main characteristics of a fake blog are:

  • the author creates a persona, although not necessarily under a fake name;
  • there is an attempt to deceive. Either or both of the following apply: the persona and/or the sponsorship by a company is not disclosed;
  • fictitious comments;
  • Examples: aforementioned LincolnFry; a blog surreptitiously sponsored or funded by a company — paid opinions without disclosure.

The main characteristics of a character blog:

  • a fictional character "writes" the blog and interacts with visitors;
  • the fictional persona is disclosed, as is any company sponsorship;
  • comments are left by the audience, interacting with the character(s);
  • Examples: Barbie, Captain Morgan, Moosetopia

And here is my third category: the fictional blog. These really don’t exist much yet, but I believe they will. A fictional blog will use the form of the blog, but have more of the characteristics of a roleplay game or novel:

  • fictional characters write the blog and interact with each other in the main blog. This creates a story for the readers;
  • there may be a message board for the audience to interact with each other, but they probably won’t be interacting with the characters;
  • the fictional nature is clear as is any company sponsorship of the experience.

For me, to apply the label "fake" requires an intent to deceive. Whether the person is "real" or not doesn’t matter, if the details are disclosed.

Enough flogging.

Character blogs, collaborative blogs

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A good friend of mine refers to the type of conversation we are having about character blogs as "inside baseball." It’s the kind of conversation where those inside it are very engaged and those outside of it can’t follow it, don’t want to follow it, and if they do manage to figure it out, think it is pretty silly. That said, I just can’t seem to let it go, so "batter up."

Rok Hrastnik posted an essay about character blogs, and used as an example the Buffyverse. In his example, he cites different types of blogs that the creators of the two television shows that comprise the Buffyverse [Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel] could create to entertain the fans of these two dearly-departed shows.

The reason I think character blogs have potential is that pretty much all the examples he cites have already sprung up, albeit in unauthorized fashion, in the online fandom already.

Fan fiction. WHEDONesque, a fan blog where Whedon posts from time to time. Spoiler sites. Bulletin boards. Role plays in which people take on the characters and create a collaborative story (often using livejournal). There is an obvious hunger to interact with these shows and these characters as well as the real people behind them. And the interactions among the fans are pretty real — friendships and flamewars alike.

Rok’s example resonated with me because I am a fan of the Buffyverse. If Joss Whedon, the creator of the two shows, decided to build a character blog as the next installment in the story, and brought his talents, his great writers and perhaps even some of the actors to occasionally give voice or visual to the new story, I would subscribe. I’d even pay 🙂 I would not be alone, not by a longshot. Are you listening, Joss?

This would be a character blog for which I AM the audience, and only then would I judge its content. As I have said before, we have to separate the form, the character blog, from the content.

BTW trust me, I know "Spike" is just a character. I still really love the lifesize cardboard figure of him that my mom gave me for Christmas. To my husband’s chagrin, it is still in the living room.

Neville Hobson also posted on character blogs today: Just because you could doesn’t mean you should. He’s got a nice definition of the difference between character and fake blogs, and also provides a bit of a recap of yesterday’s Hobson and Holtz Report discussion on the topic.

Okay, enough about character blogs. Intellectually, I think they deserve a shot, and that’s why I have been so vocal on the topic.

Personally, however, I think the blog form that holds the most promise for companies is the collaborative weblog. As I mentioned a while ago, I am working on one for a client. We are just about to start promoting it, so I should be able to post more details by the end of the week. To whet your appetite, here’s a preview.

We went with a blog for two key reasons: it fit with the overall marketing strategy and it gives voice to our customers.

The company is in the education market, which is particularly fertile ground for collaborative and online communications. The company has happy, loyal, articulate customers and we wanted to find a way to include them in our marketing efforts. We believe that their experiences, both with our products and in general, would be far more useful to our prospects than any brochure we could develop. In the past, we might have posted a bunch of case studies on our website. The collaborative weblog offers a much richer communications environment.

Initially, our bloggers will be drawn from our customer base; hopefully, over time, other educators will join us, first on the blog and then as customers.

Our goal is to create a rich community resource about topics that are at the intersection of the company’s and the customers’ interests. We will post company information from time to time, but the intent is for the bulk of the content to be community created. The combination of the blog content and our sponsorship of it should drive interest in our products without "lame marketing posts." In other words, we do good by doing good.

More later this week.

Character blogs

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I thought I was done with character blogs for a while. Oh well.

Yesterday Steve Rubel posted on the subject: he’s against, and I’d say the commenters to his post are mixed. I was going to comment on his blog, but then it got too long so here we are back on mine.

IMO there is a place for good character, or fictional, blogs, just like we make place in our lives to read fiction and non-fiction. I have no strong opinion about any of the ones currently being discussed everywhere because I am not the intended audience so whether I like them or not is irrelevant.

As others have pointed out and I have blogged here, if people are reading and enjoying a character blog, it serves its purpose. Personally, I can’t dismiss the form of a character blog just because we haven’t seen the great one that makes it all clear. As did one of the commenters to Rubel’s post, I also see enough parallels with fan fic and roleplay games, which are extremely popular, to believe that fictional blogs are highly viable alternatives.

The other thing I wonder about is how the folks who are so vehemently opposed to character blogs feel about anonymous blogs…. I wrote about this yesterday. It is entirely possible for an anonymous blogger to adopt a persona that is quite different from his/her real-life personality. It is still true: on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

When that anonymous blogger adopts a different persona, how is that different than a character blog? I can really think of only one significant way — the character blog may be fictional but it is honest. The person e-mailing Spencer Katt or commenting on Spencer’s blog knows Spencer is a character. On the other hand, the anonymous blog with a persona doesn’t admit it. To me, that is far more fake.

Now, not all anonymous blogs adopt a persona that is different from the writer’s real-life personality, so it is unfair to dismiss the form of an anonymous blog just because some anonymous blogs have turned out to be fakes. The character blog is the same — we should not confuse the form with the content.

I really like what Shel Holtz said in a post about The blog versus journalism debate. I urge you to read his whole post but for the purposes of today’s argument … err discussion… below is the part about character blogs:

"The rest of the piece is worth reading, but as the argument against character blogs continues with Steve Rubel’s dismissal of the tactic, I keep coming back to Craig’s notion of confusing the medium with the message. There’s a blogosphere with genuine voices of real people talking about things that matter, and that’s a great and powerful thing. There are also lightweight CMS tools called blogs that can be used for all kinds of other purposes. If Barbie starts blogging to little girls, it doesn’t diminish the power or value of the blogosphere, and little girls might just eat it up.

Whether we’re talking about news blogs vs. personal journals or “real” blogs vs. character blogs, let’s not forget that blogs are just a medium that can and will be put to multple uses (or what I have defined as “multiple evolutionary paths"). It’s the quality of the message that matters."

I agree 100%. Thank you for putting it so well.