Payperpost.com -- Let's all help it fail quickly

I don't think it will surprise any of my readers that I am vehemently against this model. It is the worst of Influence 1.0 thinking: whom does one pay and how much in order to get a carefully controlled message into this new medium? But why is this model worse than advertising or product placement? When reading a blog, the expectation is that you are reading the honest beliefs of a real human being. If the medium loses that value, there is no reason for it to exist.

I managed to get away to a long holiday weekend with family without hearing about the controversy of Payperpost.com. I'll try to summarize the key points that have struck me today as I have caught up.

(If you haven't already read them, read the Business Week article that started it and TechCrunch's post before you go further.)

While there are a lot of businesses trying to harness the power of word of mouth, this one step over the line into blatant exploitation because 1) the advertisers sets requirements for what the author writes 2) Payperpost.com must approve it before the author gets paid 3) there is no requirement for disclosure. Whatever is written is no longer the author's true opinion, it is the advertiser's opinion written by another hand. It is not word-of-mouth marketing, it is copywriting by another name.

Pete Blackshaw offers the best summation of the damage this could do to the idea of blogs, consumer-generated media, and a trust-based relationship between consumers and marketers.

You don't have to feel a sense of moral outrage to think this is a wrong-headed use of the blogosphere. Postbubble makes a good argument that it isn't economically viable because thinly veiled sales pitches will chase away a blog's audience, while Marshall Sponder on WebMetricsGuru says $5 - $10 isn't enough money to attract writers in the first place.

To these economic arguments I would add that 1) few product categories could even approach affording this kind of money and 2) even then the economics are still out of whack. Let's compare to classic snail mail: you pay roughly $1 per person to mail to them but you've carefully selected them so that they have some level of interest in the product. Paying even $5 for some unknown number of readers who are completely unqualified just doesn't work. Better to spend your $5 on a radio ad that reaches 1000 people.

The other way for this is to fail is for marketers not to get sucked into this misuse of emerging media. I've been encouraged in my conversations at WOMMA conferences that marketers are reluctant to engage in shilling, if only for fear of exposure. Hopefully, that fear will deter them from trying out Payperpost.com.

The defenders have two basic arguments for it:

1) It's just advertising, it's like Google offering paid links.

Wrong . Without disclosure this is lying, pure and simple. That's why all other media must label sections as "advertorial" or "special advertising section" when the content is bought, paid for, and created under the advertiser's total control. Google labels their paid links and clearly separates them from natural results.

2) It's human nature, it's the capitalist system at work.

One particularly cynical person who signed his comment at Naked Conversations "El Hakeem" said that people are naturally "venal, duplicitous, and self-seeking" and goes on to say "the only ethical test is if it delivers economic value to all participants." Human nature and the capitalist system have their dark sides to be sure, but isn't that why we form civilizations and governments, to keep these in check? "El Hakeem" clearly didn't attend any of the readings of the Declaration of Independence this holiday -- or better yet, let me direct him to the preamble of the Constitution, in which "We the People" formed a government to "promote the general welfare." Enron, Worldcom, etc created plenty of economic value, too, for those smart enough to get out in time.

So as long as we reject laissez-faire capitalism and survival-of-the-fittest law of the jungle, we accept that our behavior is bounded by certain limits. The minimum requirement for a business model like this is transparency and disclosure. Then, if people chose to read and act on the comments, and it creates economic value for all, fine.

I'm surprised no one has brought up the analogy to product placement -- this is more problematic than the advertising model. Product placements in TV shows and movies aren't disclosed (yet) and this is one of the hottest areas in marketing. But here there is another difference: that content is fictional, the characters aren't real, the events never happened, and the viewers know that. Blogs are supposed to be different: more real, more spontaneous, more honest. If they become fiction too, they lose their uniqueness in the media/entertainment world and will lose to the more compelling story telling of other media.

payperpost.com blog