So I’ve been getting a few emails about the article that appeared in the National Post about “seeding” and marketing and blogs. The first thing I need to say is that I apologize for the really appalling sentence structure I used in my small quotation. In my defence, I had just come home from work when Emily Mathieu called, and I was a bit tired. Please forgive my grammar and word choice.
Language aside, a few people have been asking about my thoughts on the whole free phone gig, and how I can reconcile my code of ethics with blogging about products I receive for free. I’m a little puzzled by this, because I just can’t seem to see the ethical quandary here: I’m not being forced to say good things about a product, or anything at all. In the case of the Nokia promotion, all I’ve been asked to do is to use their product to create content for my site.
After all, this isn’t the first time that this is happening. I continually receive free movie tickets and free CDs, so most of the film and music reviews you read on this site have been the result of promotional give-aways. Do I feel like I need to disclose, on every review, who gave me the free tickets or free disc? No. Simply because I was given the free item without restrictions as to what I’m going to say, or without a clause to say anything at all.
Bloggers do have the potential to sway public opinion (which is why I think Matchstick is working in a particularly genius manner for the Nokia promotion), so I do believe that they should disclose anything that may be mislead their readers: conflicts of interest, forced commentary, or unoriginal thought. In the case of the Matchstick/Nokia promotion, I am in no way misleading the few readers I have; instead, I am offering full disclosure as to how I received the product, and what I will be doing with it — I wouldn’t have been in the National Post article otherwise. If the phone would have come with the clause that I needed to offer a favorable review of the product, I wouldn’t have accepted it: if anything was to break an ethical code on my blog, it would be to create content that didn’t truly reflect my thoughts. In that sense, accepting the new Nokia 6682 is not an ethical quandary at all. It is instead a reflection of a very smart strategy by Matchstick in order to show that any discussion about a product leads to exposure and brand recognition. And I have no problem with being a part of that, on my own terms.
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