Guidelines about Internet reviews: more integrity online

To those who occasionally ask me whether it is a good idea to hire a few students and flood the review sites and forums with positive stuff about their company or products I give a standard answer: You should definitely do not do that, it is unethical, stupid and most probably someone will sooner or later discover the deception (many examples here), with very damaging results. From now on I will add one more argument to my objection: such practices could be also illegal. According to the NYT online: 
"The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday that a California marketing company had settled charges that it engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees write and post positive reviews of clients’ games in the Apple iTunes Store, without disclosing that they were being paid to do so. The charges were the first to be brought under a new set of guidelines for Internet endorsements that the agency introduced last year. The guidelines have often been described as rules for bloggers, but they also cover anyone writing reviews on Web sites or promoting products through Facebook or Twitter."
Good news for those who believe that some guidelines are necessary in order to protect consumers from marketers and businesses that do not realize that the time of the push marketing is definitively over and look for any opportunity to deceive the public.

When the Old Media Meet the New

It is encouraging to see that slowly the old media, one of the main victims of the Web, learn to turn the Web and more specifically the Social Media threat into a strategic opportunity by endorsing them as part of their marketing toolbox. Those who follow my publications and blog posts know that this is what my recent research is all about. I am glad to say that talking to either colleagues or practitioners I see that this issue is steadily gaining interest.
The New York Times is good example of an old media business that uses the Social Media very successfully as part of its campaign to increase brand awareness and customers. Their recent Facebook venture is a big success according to the Nieman Journalism Lab. I found very interesting that the NYT concluded that the campaign netted “4,3 times the value of the spend” while it quadrupled the NYT fan figures.

Hopefully those still skeptical about the New Marketing will think again