Posted
April 26, 2005

The Buying and Selling of Reputation

The next frontier in advertising? It is being inserted in all kinds of places where we don't realize it's a paid message.

I find it very curious that highbrow business journalism keeps documenting new marketing abuses as news, but consistently fails to connect the dots and validate them as a trend. The trend: amoral marketing innovations that cynically appropriate social reputation and ultimately corrupt it. There has been a spate of stories on this topic in the past few weeks:

  • Electronics makers Sony and Ericsson have hired dozens of actors to hang out in tourist areas and ask unsuspecting passersby to take their pictures with Sony Ericsson camera-phones: a crypto-sales pitch. The tactic commercializes casual human relationships in the service of “buzz marketing.” A new Word of Mouth Marketing Association (!) purports to police such abuses. (WSJ, 2/9/04)
  • “Consumer experts” on national and local TV news shows are often trusted and knowledgeable recommenders of the best educational gadgets and toys. But far from being disinterested, many of them are quietly being paid by the likes of Microsoft, Mattel, Kodak and RadioShack to mention their products on the air. Neither the networks, sponsors or “experts” are publicly disclosing the commercial affiliations (WSJ, 4/9/05).
  • Under the guise of their cooking expertise and professional passion, celebrity chefs are promoting dishes that use ingredients such as frozen shrimp, pork, raisins and avocado. But their gourmet preferences may be a sham. Food companies and trade associations are paying the chefs to promote dishes with these ingredients, and the chefs are conveniently failing to disclose their retainers (WSJ, 4/22/05).
  • Product placement is moving into Broadway theater: the new production of Sweet Charity altered the play’s dialogue so that a bartender says, “Gran Centenario, the tequila?” instead of “A double Scotch again, sir?” (NYT, 4/22/05)
  • In pursuit of TV viewers who use remote controls and TiVO to flee ads, television advertisers are trying to launch a new genre — “branded entertainment,” also known as “product integration.” The goal is to embed a sponsor’s product into the storyline of a sitcom or drama so that no viewer can escape the marketing experience. (More on this in a later post.)

Many people might respond to all this, So what else is new? Selling out is a venerable tradition. And in one sense, that’s true. But the very newsworthiness of the latest stories suggests that there is more going on here. Marketing is now reaching more deeply and insidiously into social environments that have historically been insulated from commercial pitches. Social communication that we once considered sincere and credible — casual social encounters on the street, the theater, broadcast news — are being quietly corrupted by commercial motives.

While any company wants to enjoy social goodwill, most of them seem more eager to buy it than earn it. Earning it takes too much time and effort, and the end result is uncertain. In any case, business culture likes to think that everything has a price, that consumer loyalty can be bought. So businesses, ignoring the reality of the social commons, feel free to colonize the dwindling pockets of credibility in the public landscape.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Knowing what we do about the marketing business — its guile, ingenuity and lack of scruple — how can social commons protect themselves from commercial appropriation and replenish themselves? Is there a way to break marketers’ “pump and dump” cycle of purchasing reputation and then moving on to the next untouched source of social credibility? A good place to start is by identifying and punishing marketers who trade cynically on social trust. Accountants like to monetize consumer “goodwill.” Maybe they should first ask if it’s for sale.