Assimilation

Josh Mankiewicz with Dateline NBC has a piece this week that looks at how corporations are beginning to engage in the blogosphere as a marketing vehicle. The purists might disagree with me, but I don't think that the long-time residents of the blogosphere object to our increasing presence. As long as marketers play their A-game, consistently add value and remain transparent to their intentions, I feel we'll be welcome.

British Sky Broadcasting fell just shy here when they did not initally disclose that they were behind the viral live-action Simpsons video I blogged about last week. It was always unclear from the get-go who was behind the video. And while it was a safe bet judging by the quality to have assumed it was a professional, one never knows in this era. In hindsight Sky should have included a small watermark in the vid to indicate that it was their baby. Do I hold this against them? Absolutely not. They will learn. And so will we from them.

Comments

[Betsy Devine]

I'm glad you posted this about Sky, Steve, because my unguided reaction would have been less charitable. But newbies' mistakes deserve some charity--even when the newbies are experts in some other field.

[Paul fabretti]

I too, living in the UK, wondered if the high level of on-channel ads for The Simpsons was in some way rlated to the you tube video! Interestingly, it raises the question over the increasing use of these types of channels in viral campaigns.

Can the volume of consumer-produced videos be sufficiently large as to allow the promotional viral videos to slip-through and thereby ctrate the desired effect.
Will the growing communities not smell a rat when their forums and postings become sponsored and then move on the next medium?
Myspace.com is just one such example, where companies are blatantly sponsoring a home page or, using animated advertars (avatar ads) to promote their products on any and every forum they see fit.

A great idea (annsummers lingerie by the way!) but one which needs to be used infrequently for maximum impact.