Paying for influence

Leeds based youth marketing agency Dubit get a kicking in the Sunday Times today in an article titled "Children paid to plug junk food on Facebook and Bebo”. http://tinyurl.com/yhp4sag

The agency's model is to recruit kids to mention their clients' brands in social networks in return for a financial reward.

I don't know Dubit well, but I do know that they have an enviable client list. Their response to the article is to explain that they are above board and professional in their approach, citing CRB checks as a verification. But that's not the point. The Sunday Times has taken a morally indignant stance and I'm with them on that.

From a professional stand-point, though it really frustrates me. So many marketing agencies believe they can play in the social networking, word of mouth space by taking a traditonal, promotional marketing incentive-led approach.

They absolutely don't get the point. You don't generate word of mouth by waving wads of cash at consumers. That's advertising. The currency of word of mouth is ideas. A something that gets people talking, and the only way to place those ideas in consumers networks is to engage in conversation and ask permission for them to pass them on.

Only PR people have the skills to understand how to create ideas which have sufficient social currency for people to want to pass them on. And only PR people have the soft-selling skills to get them out there.

To simply pay consumers to act as brand ambassadors is wrong. It lacks authenticity, it lacks respect for consumers and it’s just so crass.

That’s why proper word of mouth marketing remains a PR skill. At last paid-for marketing agencies are learning to appreciate how difficult a skill it is to get right. Especially when your morally dubious work is exposed in the UK’s biggest selling Sunday broadsheet.