Lots of conversation today about fake blogs, which got me thinking, just what is a "fake blog?" <\/p>\n
The McDonalds fake french fry (FFF, also stands for fake fast food) blog is a creation from McDonald’s ad people, but it was supposed to be poking fun at the "whole food that looks like dead people phenomenon." So is it really "fake?" Or should we criticize it not for being fake, but simply for being lame. <\/p>\n
Pepsi Girl blog wasn’t covertly sponsored by Pepsi, so not "fake" in that sense. According to the latest info from AdRants<\/a>, Pepsi apparently had nothing to do with it, but it was<\/strong> developed as a joke. So it wasn’t authentic, or "real" as we have come to expect of blogs. But does that make it fake?<\/p>\n Here’s a round-up of the fake blog opinions I read today: <\/p>\n Jim Logan<\/a> ; Matthew Oliphant\/BusinessLogs<\/span><\/a> <\/span>(you’ll find the links to the mentioned blogs in this post); BL Ochman’s original post on the Pepsi Girl blog<\/a> ; InsideBlogging<\/a> ; Dan Gillmor<\/a> ; courtesy Dan, I found Kevin Dugan’s Strategic Public Relations<\/a> blog and his review of the FFF blog<\/a> as well as a later post Fake Blogs Should Sponsor Real Blogs <\/a>; Andy Lark<\/a><\/p>\n So what’s a fake blog? <\/p>\n On one hand, I agree with Andy Lark — these were jokes, and perhaps we should lighten up a bit, like ’em\/love ’em\/hate ’em, have a laugh and get back to something more interesting than a styrofoam french fry that is supposed to look like Abe Lincoln. <\/p>\n On the other hand…. we need to figure out how to tell a blog that has the reporting or opinions of a true live person (whether we think they are a wing nut or not) from a blog that is an invented piece of fiction (funny or sad, effective or lame, it doesn’t matter). Why? Because we rely on blogs to be the voices of real people, people like us with whom we will agree some of the time, and disagree others. People we can respect and trust. <\/p>\n So I’ll make a suggestion… if you want to write a fictional blog, go ahead. Just tell the readers somewhere … like in the "about this blog" link … That’s what we do with books, right. We tell the reader whether they are reading Fiction or Non-fiction \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Now, the big brand marketers are definitely going to continue to try and manipulate blogs. By creating fake\/covert ones, or by trying to pull the wool over our eyes about the "buzz" something has (example: the recent Ogilvy-Mather stunt for client American Express. For details, BL Ochman summarizes it here<\/a>.) And it will probably get more subtle, even as we get better at sniffing out fakes. They just won’t be able to help themselves. In the end, they probably won’t do much damage to their brands. <\/p>\n But, of course, they won’t do them any real good either, and that’s the point that they miss: done right, real blogs can actually help build the brand. <\/p>\n Of more concern to me is the smaller firms who follow in the fake blogger’s footsteps. Their brands likely won’t be strong enough to survive a serious mis-step in the blogosphere. They have to get it right the first time. <\/p>\n Which is why I was so pleased by the news out of NY PR firm CooperKatz today. As covered in MarketingVox: Congratulations Steve Rubel: CooperKatz Makes Blog PR Practice Out of Exec’s Blog. <\/a><\/p>\n