What if ads didn’t hide their true colors?

Near the end of Jennifer Eagan’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, she envisions a New York of the near future where brands use “parrots” or handpicked secret brand ambassadors who are paid to rally crowds around a particular product, campaign, or event. These parrots are selected based on three variables: “How much they needed money (“Need”), how connected and respected they were (“Reach”), and how open they might be to selling that influence (“Corruptibility”).”
When reading this passage, I was struck by just how spot-on this scenario was. Indeed, in a world where an estimated 1 in 5 Yelp reviews are penned by paid reviewers, and celebrities are earning thousands for off the cuff tweets, we need to have a frank talk about paid endorsements.
It should be noted that this subject (sometimes known as astroturfing) pre-dates social media. In certain industries, for example, high fashion, the question of free gifts to celebrities has often been likened to a form of bribery.
However, we live in an age where thanks to social media, influencers have never been more important to brands. What have become known as “Power Middle Influencers”—defined as a dedicated bloggers and tweeters who have “small but extremely loyal audiences”—have been shown to garner 16 times more engagement than Facebook paid ad campaigns coming from successful brands (according to Social Chorus). It’s easy to see why brands are tempted to discreetly pay these people for positive reviews, and when increasing numbers of people are supplementing their income with blogging, it’s easy to understand why some bloggers would accept such an arrangement.
What’s more, the rise in Native Advertising, or embedding ads into social network feeds, is creating incentives for brands to do their best at imitating actual social media posts as a means of discreetly blending in. This is working so well, that Twitter has just announced its plan to leverage its native advertising platform MoPub to the mobile apps on its exchange. However, this is not without consequences, ads that masquerade as content can not only raise the ire of consumers (if you’re not aware of the Atlantic Monthly’s native advertising fiasco, I urge you to examine this worst case scenario), but more importantly can attract the attention of regulatory bodies.

This is why I wanted to pen a message to my fellow colleagues in advertising, blogging, and brand management: influencer marketing will only gain in importance, and not all influencers can be expected to work for free. There is nothing wrong with entering into contracts with these people, but for the sake of everyone’s credibility, be transparent. Just as the FTC is asking paid tweeters to add the #ad or #spon hashtags at the end of sponsored tweets, we need to make sure that all “advertorial” coming from blogs and social media is indicated as such. Besides, what’s so bad about the phrase “and now, a word from our sponsor…”?

Image Sources:
http://www.magicandmayhemwriters.com/your-ad-here/
http://www.someecards.com/

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