A Brave New World: Kmart Uses Paid Twitter Posts in Its New Campaign
December 16th, 2008 by Chris HerrickNot sure how many of you followed the online discussion this weekend about how Kmart (and therefore parent company Sears) used paid incentives to get bloggers to write about and tweet about their shopping excursions to the store. While we’ve talked quite a bit on our blog about using Twitter as a tool for getting messages out about products or services, in most instances, we were referring to company sponsored tweets or blogs. In this instance, well-known bloggers with an established follower network were given a $500 shopping spree to Kmart and were also supplied with a $500 give-away card that they could then give away to one of their readers – the catch was they had to post about their experiences in the store. So how did the experiment work?
Well, let’s start with the positive. Initial response was quite good. In fact, Marketing Daily’s Karlene Lukovitz posted on Thursday about how Vitrue (a social marketing company that manages a social media index for companies to determine a daily share-of-voice for any brand by tracking the extent of online conversations about that brand, including mentions on social networks, blogs and Twitter and video and photo sharing) showed that Kmart’s SMI rose to 23.21% after the campaign –a 59% increase over its average 12.8% SMI in November. Translated into metrics we can all better understand: approximately 500,000 people were reached with the campaign…not bad for a $6000 investment. Key to Kmart’s success was their transparency in the campaign – bloggers were upfront about Kmart’s involvement in the giveaway contest and in paying them for the post. Kmart was also clear that blog posts did not necessarily have to be positive, although in the end, all of them were.
Perhaps unforeseen to Kmart at the time, the campaign started up quite an intense online discussion on the ethicacy of both paying and excepting money for blog and Twitter entries. First, let’s be clear…bloggers have been paid to write about products for companies since the dawn of the blogosphere. I think the issue here is that seemingly unbiased bloggers with large followings are taking money to blog about products and companies that they may not have been so inclined to positively review had it not been for the giveaways. As I’ve blogged about before, consumers tend to trust peers more than companies, so the practice makes sense in terms of gaining a foothold with potential customers, but does it destroy the element of “trust” that many feel the blogosphere is based on?
Many (and I mean many) bloggers have weighed in on the discussion (you can read many excerpts online, but I suggest you follow the stream by reading Chris Brogan’s post first). Personally, I feel that we don’t give consumers (and by consumers, I mean both consumers of products and of blog posts) enough credit for being able to sniff out the truth in any one blogger’s posts. Blogging, tweeting, and social media are and will continue to be used for advertising and marketing- and, just as we use our best judgment when we encounter traditional ads, this new medium should be no different. While the current discussion may dissuade some companies from jumping into the social media melee, I tend to think it should be just the opposite….the ground rules for this brave new world are just starting to form and the consequences for trying new and innovative marketing techniques are pretty unsubstantial when compared to the long term payoff.
Tags: social media, Twitter, twitter marketing
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