{"id":72,"date":"2005-04-15T10:20:58","date_gmt":"2005-04-15T14:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/?p=72"},"modified":"2005-04-15T10:20:58","modified_gmt":"2005-04-15T14:20:58","slug":"personas-and-fictional-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/2005\/04\/15\/personas-and-fictional-blogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Personas and fictional blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today in an e-mail exchange with a fellow marketing blogger, we agreed that much of the sturm and drang around fictional blogs (see yesterday’s post<\/a> for my definition thereof) reminded us both very much of the brouhaha that occured when the World Wide Web went "commercial" in the 90s. Purists were aghast at the pristine Internet being used for commercial purposes. Well, we know what happened with that \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

One of the main beefs that purists have about fictional blogs is that the author of the blog is not a real person, which they argue perverts the authenticity of the blog experience. I don’t agree. As I commented on Paul Chaney’s blog<\/a> yesterday and he blogged<\/a> today: what matters is the intended audience. As long as they know they are reading a fiction and interacting with a character, if the blog is well done, creative, entertaining, and the intended audience enjoys it, who are we to criticize. If you aren’t the audience, it just doesn’t matter what you think about it. <\/p>\n

So I started thinking about other fictional personas that I have interacted with in my 20-odd years in the business (word choice intentional). And I came up with a fairly well known tech persona that is a fictional character with whom people have interacted with in the pages of PC Week (now e-Week) for many many years: rumour columnist Spencer F. Katt<\/a> <\/p>\n

Spencer has his own e-mail address, and a fairly rich back story that has been created over a number of years. Everybody knows that the column is written by someone or someones at the magazine, but that hasn’t prevented people from engaging with the character. <\/p>\n

So I ask the question: if the folks at e-Week decided to change the delivery format of Spencer’s column to a blog, would that be any different than any of the current examples of fictional characters with blogs that are being pilloried: the Moose<\/a>, T. Alexander<\/a> and Captain Morgan<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nope. <\/p>\n

And in my book, it would be just fine as long as the intended audience enjoys it, and the company is honest about the fictional nature of the blog. <\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong><\/span> Tris Hussey dug a bit deeper and discovered that Spencer is indeed blogging<\/a> (and flogging his column in every post I might add). So, given that we haven’t had any backlash against the Katt, whose blog appears to have started in March, either the people reading it don’t realize he isn’t really a 20+ year old cat or it’s okay for a blog to be written by a fictional character as long as you like him.<\/p>\n

Since I think most people realize Spencer is fictional, I’ll go with option 2. Which proves the point. If the intended audience enjoys it, a blog by a fictional character is just fine. If the audience hates it, it will die the death it deserves. Therefore, incumbent on marketers to create good, fun enjoyable blogs, whether written by real or fictional folk.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier today in an e-mail exchange with a fellow marketing blogger, we agreed that much of the sturm and drang around fictional blogs (see yesterday’s post for my definition thereof) reminded us both very much of the brouhaha that occured when the World Wide Web went "commercial" in the 90s. Purists were aghast at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/getgood.com\/roadmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}