When bloggers Cross Ethical Lines; Posing as Press but Selling Their Consulting Services

I’ve been thinking about something recently that makes me want to don my neatly pressed hair shirt and bay loudly.

            What’s got my shorts in a wedge isn’t the buffed up vole tunneling madly about two inches under the surface of my upper garden where the little bastard has destroyed my four nearly mature French beefsteak tomatoes, but rather a behavior I noticed beginning last year at two trade shows.

            That behavior is bloggers behaving badly, very badly. By and large most bloggers are treated like regular members of the press. And when they arrive at an event most behave like conventional reporters. Most, but not all, it seems.

            What I’ve noticed is a growing number of bloggers who get press credentials, show up at an event, grab food and USB-based press kits, file a few stories and then begin hawking their services as marketing consultants.

Such behavior is annoying.

            Here’s why: I’m a retired producer of Demo branded events.  By my count I produced and co-produced some 16 shows before I had a stroke in the hours right before I was to open a Demo show in

Arizona

in 2002. The stroke ended my career, but opened up the world of social media to me, which allows me to write about things I really care about and on which my audience and peers rate me as an “authority.”

            As a producer of Demo, I knew full well how much it costs to feed and hydrate members of the press – the total is north of $200 for the duration of the event. Most people who attend events like the ones I produced paid for the tickets. The press – and bloggers who are accredited as press – need only pay for the hotel fee. Everything else is free.

            Marketing people who attend the event and pay for their seats are there specifically to support a company, and sometimes to scout for new business. They are paying guests who are part of the value proposition of the show.

            Most members of the press, including bloggers who cover the event and its technologies, are also a very important part of the same value equation.

            But bloggers who gain admittance to the event under the cover of “registered press / bloggers”, then write only one or two stories and spend equal time pitching their for-profit consulting services to attendees, cross one of my hard ethical

boundaries. 

            I detest this behavior. If I were I still working and saw a blogger do this, I would firmly ask them to leave the event immediately and do my best to see they were never given a press pass, ever again.

At most events, consultants are paid attendees.  When consultants are there posing as bloggers/press to gain free admission, they cross a hard ethical line.

Enough ranting, it’s time to take off my scratchy hair shirt and put on a washed soft tie dyed t-shirt. Groovy, now things seem better. Jim Forbes 09/02/2008.

Comments

[Mark Cahill]

If you've got to trick people into talking to you, you've got a failed business model. I'd be surprised if they were able to generate much business this way.

mark, it's not that they are tricking people. it's that they lie to gain admittance as "press/bloggers" and then procede to spend much of their time pitching their business as "marketing" or blogging consultants.
I don't think condoning such behavior is fair, since most PR people pay full fair to gain admittance to the same events.

I hate slimeballs.

jim