I find this immensely amusing.
In an episode that shows both the promise and peril of a corporate embrace of blogging, Richards helped Dr. Pepper/Seven Up run a blogcentric campaign last spring for its new milk-based drink, Raging Cow. It started a blog for the cow–“the cow had his own site,” says director of corporate communications Mike Martin (who’s a little fuzzy on bovine anatomy). Then it screened hundreds of young bloggers to find a suitable group to help promote the drink. Dr. Pepper flew the five winners and their parents to Dallas to try the product and gave them several hundred dollars in Amazon gift certificates.
While Martin says the campaign was a success, it provoked an angry backlash in the blog world, where the relationship between the company and the blogs was seen as crassly commercial and poorly disclosed. “A case of crude corporate cluelessness,” wrote one widely read pundit and law professor. Todd Copilevitz, director of interactive strategy at Richards, admits the company should have had the bloggers repeat disclosures more often.
This, from an article on the ever-blurring line between blogging-as-teen-journal and blogging-as-commercial-outreach on FastCompany does a great job of initiating those new to blogging on the dangers and opportunities therein.
One of the issues most intriguing from an advertising and public relations perspective is the meta-ad. Blogs may be great for corporations to decrease costs and increase what they’re saying is communication with their customers, but as Curt’s said time and time again, blogs are tragically under-equipped to handle discussions, which may pose a challenge when the hype dries up. Are these blogs really successful at communicating with customers, thus driving support for the organization? Or is the support there simply because the organization has jumped on the weblog bandwagon?