I made the analogy of a basketball team. A basketball team has five players who all serve distinct roles in different positions (center, small forward, etc.). Look at any basketball game and usually there will be two or three guys on the team who are making a bulk of the points. (If it’s Cleveland, there will be one guy.)

Any coach would be crazy, however, to play with only these high-scoring players on the court. The three best players in the league would have a very tough time against the worst full team in the league.

If you’re thinking of switching out players, that’s fine. The players represent tactics, not channels. Rather, the positions represent channels. Your facebook efforts might be faltering, like Jameer Nelson during the finals last year, but that doesn’t mean you take facebook completely off the court. You try something else with that position.

Newton gets a lot of credit for this idea, but let’s face it: People were noticing this a long time before he put together a theory about it. And they were noticing it didn’t just apply to physical objects.

Whether it’s the stock market, a person’s mood, or the recent batting averages of a baseball player, the rule applies: What goes up must come down.

When I read a fascinating article Reuters article on the recent brand troubles that Starbucks is experiencing, I found myself repeating the rule in my head.

Starbucks as a brand isn’t failing or dying. It has just been succeeding too spectacularly.

Starbucks gags and jokes were popular for a while. We’ve seen the chain reach ubiquity in a Springfield mall on the Simpsons. We’ve heard comedians crack jokes about how the coffee shop is appearing on every corner. But we laughed, knowing that would never actually happen.

Yet, when Starbucks has to peel back its explosive growth and finally start closing stores instead of opening them, we throw around words like brand crisis and brand avoidance. We herald it as a new trend, when really it’s just the aftermath of an old trend.

Starbucks is a simple example of brand backlash. Its backlash is greater than most, but that’s because its brand is greater than most.

Brand backlash isn’t limited to coffee shops. You can see it in almost any market where brands play an important part.

Take McDonald’s, for instance. It’s the reigning champion of fast food, but also the scapegoat for every problem the industry faces. Supersize Me focuses on McDonald’s. The term Mc Job is based on McDonald’s. Is McDonald’s having a brand crisis? No, it’s just brand backlash, and it’s one of the responsibilities they bear as the biggest and best.

Coca-Cola faces similar issues. When a chain e-mail circulates claiming (incorrectly) that soda saps bone mass, which beverage is given as an example? It’s almost never Pepsi. Even in our financial crisis, we see examples of brand backlash with industries worth of anger being poured onto single companies.

Brand backlash is one of those problems that’s inevitable. It’s a byproduct of success. I’d imagine most PR practitioners loathe having such a problem, even if it does mean they’re doing something right. It forces desperate measures like the ones we’re seeing with Starbucks.

Wendy’s, on the other hand, probably looks at the movie Supersize Me with longing eyes.

Except, of course, for the part where everyone seemed to miss the most important snippet of the guidelines: Bloggers must clearly and conspicuously disclose any compensation. To me, the entire argument has completely overshot its landing. The consumer, the one to be protected by these rules, is being left out. Terrible assumptions are being made. No guidelines are being put forth.

What ‘clearly and conspicuously’ shouldn’t mean

There’s a certain gestalt to other forms of media that makes disclosure incredibly easy. This is the fine print at the bottom of a magazine ad or the “Paid Actor” notification in a TV commercial. It’s a package deal with the message right there at the bottom. Even if the consumer doesn’t read it, he or she is aware it’s there.

Blog posts, meanwhile, are like the black guy in a horror movie. Shortly after making an appearance, they’re brutally chopped up. After that, most people just see the head, or maybe the head and a trail of blood, then scream and run away.

There’s no gestalt to blog posts, and especially not to blogs as a whole.

• Disclosures at the bottom of posts mean nothing to most users. It’s not like a television ad with extremely small text. Disclosures at the bottom of posts (and especially those that are below the fold) just don’t (and won’t) get read. Much of the time, they won’t be seen.
• Disclosures on another page on the blog are simply ludicrous. Any blog with a bounce rate of less than 50% is doing well on attracting users to other parts of the site. Fedorable’s bounce rate is usually around 60%. That means only 40% make it to another page on Fedorable before leaving, and most of those aren’t going to the About page. In the end, only about 3-6% of Fedorable readers click to get there. This is equivalent to TV commercials only having to disclose 1 out of every 20 times they aired.

Sadly, a lot of bloggers are simply planning on putting two sentences on the end of their thirty-page, boring-as-hell About page. The less people who read it, the better. That’s just unfair to the consumer.

Blogging (and the Internet in general) is a different beast. If we’re going to put forth disclosure guidelines, let’s get it right. Here’s my take on ethical disclosure– not so  much the when or why, but the how.

Guidelines for ethical disclosure in blogging: The abbreviated disclosure message (v1)

Placement within the blog

• Disclosures should be placed after the headline/subheadline but before the content of the post.
• Related disclosures must be on the same page as the content of the post. Abbreviated posting (such as listings in a ‘Related Posts’ widgets) do not need to carry a disclosure. The actual text of the disclosure must be on the page, not linked from elsewhere.

Disclosing for the semantic web

• Disclosures should be placed within <em> or <strong> tags to signify their importance in the document.
• Semantic placement within an article should follow the visual placement (noted above). Disclosures must be part of the page source, and not added with javascript. This is to ensure that users with screen readers or users foregoing javascript have access to a standard method of disclosure.

Abbreviating disclosures

• To retain stylistic flow in their blog posts, bloggers may hide disclosure statements with javascript.
• In place of the message, a standard, short notification of “There is a disclosure associated with this post” with a Read More link can be used.
• The Read More link should reveal the entire notification, which is already semantically part of the document (and not added content from javascript).
• The message should be both hidden and displayed with javascript. Messages should not be hidden by default, unless a suitable alternative means of accessing the disclosure is available for non-javascript users.

Style considerations

• Disclosure statements should maintain the same readability as the body copy of the article including relative font size and background contrast. Disclosures may be plain, bolded or italicized.

Let’s aim for v2

I think my guidelines work pretty well. They make for the same “grain of salt” effect generated by the fine print in TV commercials. The abbreviated disclosure message as a standard would quickly inform consumers that there’s something else to know, without messing up the overall flow of a blog post. It also covers screen reader users or people who are quickly scanning through the blogosphere to find info about a product.

Of course, I might be forgetting certain situations. I do want to fight for the consumer here, but I also don’t want to leave the bloggers out in the cold. What do you think? What would you change or add?

My problem with the whole ordeal, and the point the article doesn’t really touch on, is that they’re paying interns to do this.

In other words, they’re not just practicing sleazy, backward ethics; they’re teaching them. Here’s an excerpt from the Reverb e-mail, written by Doug Kennedy, who I imagine has something like Overseer – Sleazebag Production on his business card:

My office did mention that you had issues with our staff and interns writing reviews for some of our clients games, I’m sure you are aware that in order to write a review on iTunes an individual needs to purchase the game or app and can only write one review. Our interns and employees write their reviews based on their own game play experience, after having purchased the game by themselves, a practice not uncommon by anyone selling games or apps and hardly unethical.

I could make the assumption that Doug is a complete idiot. I could just assume that nobody has mentioned anything about bias due to financial stake to him, that he never accidentally read something on disclosure ethics, or that he’s never heard anything about the mechanics of social media or the way the Internet works in general. But I won’t give him that benefit of a doubt. I have to just assume he’s just a sleazebag.

On some level, I can deal with that. For better or worse, shilling is a fairly widespread practice. For now we have to settle with the fact that, every now and then, a sleazebag like Doug gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

What I simply can’t deal with is the fact that he’s passing on these dubious ethics to interns, masquerading them as industry standard. Practices like this should only be taught as an example of what not to do.

They say it’s always good to end a blog post with a call to action. Well, here’s Reverb’s client list. I think you know what to do.

All of the PR folks in the chat promptly painted their faces with war paint and went to battle against each other.

Okay, so it wasn’t that bad. But we were starkly divided over the core idea of who owns the brand– is it the customers or the company?

I think, in the end, despite the great observations and arguments on both sides, we were really arguing semantics. Sender, receiver, signal… we were all talking about the same process. What we really needed were some common terms to agree on (and not the terms settled upon after a war, but words).

Brand Image

On the Company owns the brand side of things, we have brand image. Brand image is how a company wants you to see them. Of course, even here we’ll see disagreement, but for the most part this is the realm of the Public Relations team of the company.

Brand Perception

In the other corner stands The customer owns the brand, which we’ll call brand perception. Brand perception is how the public (the ones you are relating to) views the product. It’s the favorite team shirt a football fan wears on Sundays. A band poster hung in a teenager’s room. An opinion voiced to a friend.

So there we have it, the two sides of the branding coin. Big thanks to Shel Holtz and the others for helping to hammer out these terms near the end of the chat. In the end, both sides were right, we were just looking at it from different perspectives.

Although, if you had to look at it from one side, obviously the company owns the brand.

After mulling it over, I can’t help but think it’s bad advice. Here’s why.

The wisdom of crowds

We will often handwave the mindless comments from naysayers, only to turn around and happily embrace the equally mindless comments from people who seem to do nothing but compliment. There’s no difference in the value of the comments, but one flatters our egos, and thus is recorded.

In the end, we shouldn’t be dismissing anything, especially when it comes to feedback from a large body of commentators.

Plop a jar of marbles in front of someone and ask them to guess the count, and they’ll probably be completely off. Average the guesses of a hundred people, however, and your result will be pretty close to the actual amount.

Some people will guess way too high. Some way too low. But look at the big picture, the average, and suddenly you realize that their guesses all made a meaningful contribution, even though on an individual level they each would be pretty useless.

The middle way

In Buddhism, they call it the middle way– a path of moderation that sits between two extremes.

Look for it when you receive feedback online. The extremes will always be there, and the answer will always lie somewhere (usually directly) in the middle.

Don’t get upset with the trolls or overly delighted with the yes men. Accept both and use them to paint a picture of how people (with an emphasis on the plural) feel about your product.

And remember: You only run into trolls when you cross bridges. If you encounter them, you at least know you’re getting somewhere.

The word ethics leaves a lot of room for this type of behavior. In the end, being ethical simply means consistently following a set of rules. But the rules can be anything, and are for the most part left up to the individual or corporation. Take the following:

Company X: Public Relations Ethics Code

Rule 1: Create a new account (not a fake, but an “avatar” representing our corporate beliefs) any time a website negatively covers our news to inform the public in a friendly manner.

Rule 2: Ensure as many people as possible hear our news by sending out mass e-mails to thousands, or if possible tens of thousands, of users.

Rule 3: Encourage industry experts to tout our products by giving them regular financial incentive packages.

Rule 4: Sacrifice a kitten any time someone retweets a blog post.

Company X, if it followed this code with consistency (it’s hard to keep well stocked with kittens), would technically be ethical. But would they be good? Even the biggest cat hater would have a hard time thinking so.

Approach codes of ethics with caution and skepticism, because it’s the next place the sleazy companies will go in an effort to look good while still being bad.

I wonder if they used the “But everybody’s doing it!” defense.

The article was particularly surprising to me because I know that some PR and communication firms regularly engage in this practice. Lifestyle Lift, the company featured in the article, was engaging in the practice heavily, ordering employees to take time out of their day to post fake reviews.

But Lifestyle Lift is a fairly large company. The only reason they got caught is because they were really stupid about it, having multiple people to blow the whistle and also leaving an obvious online trail. Meanwhile thousands more fake reviews are posted every day by unscrupulous “reputation management” firms around the country. Will they stop now, knowing there’s a definite cost associated with it?

I’m sure the ones in New York will think about it for a second, then go back to business as usual. The firms in other states won’t miss a beat.

Another question is one of accountability. If a sleazebag company pays a sleazebag PR firm to post fake reviews, who picks up the tab when they get caught for being “cynical, manipulative and illegal” (As the New York attorney general so eloquently put it)?

If you haven’t, here’s a summary: Guy watches guitar get broken by baggage handlers. Guy gets nowhere with customer service. Guy makes suspiciously-high-production-value music video on Youtube complaining about his treatment.

And the crowd goes wild. It’s at nearly 400,000 views already.

I have to wonder if Dave Carroll, the man behind the video, was just that pissed, or if he’s some kind of marketing genius. Or maybe a little of both.

United has since responded in an attempt to suppress the raging wildfire. I don’t know exactly what they did and I don’t care. It’s too late now.

I used to think I was alone in this harsh insensitivity towards corporate responses like this. After all, they’re doing something, right? A quick glance at the Youtube comments, or at many of the blog posts on this ordeal, shows me I’m actually among the least angry now.

Too little, too late. Is this the new face of social media? Should big companies start investing more in prevention, and less in cure?

Then again, for the viral video, perhaps it’s appropriate that there is no cure.

Does this smell like bullshit to anyone else?

I’ve looked around the net for statistics on just how many online, on-site (i.e. sites like Amazon or Newegg) reviews are real, written by users who had no conflicts of interest. I can’t find anything. Are 10% of reviews planted by scoundrel “marketing” firms? 25%? 50%? Even more?

How could we even find out? Where do we start in this epic fight against evil? I have some ideas.

Language

You can guess, with 83% accuracy, whether the writer of a given text is male or female. Surely we can use a method like this to detect when people are raving a bit too much about a product, or recalling way too many details about their recent dining experience.

Men and women are mostly the same. Online shills are the lowest form of human life. They should stick out like a sore thumb.

Location

We can tell where reviews are coming from. If we have particularly prolific IP addresses pumping out reviews, can’t we weed them out? Joe P. Normal isn’t going to write 200 reviews a week for a select few products across multiple websites.

I’m sure that some of the major sites are doing this already, but once again I can’t find much information on it. This is something that should be publicized more. (And, please, if you have information you’d like to volunteer, comment!)

Fighting online shills is a noble cause. If you’re doing it, let the world know!

Shame

It’s no longer enough to simply delete shill reviews. We have to do something to discourage the practice in general.

My first suggestion is simple:

We can’t really bring the stocks back (right?), but the concept of public humiliation as punishment is still very real, especially in the realm of public relations and online marketing.

And there’s another problem here: These shills, as I’ve already noted, are some of the most despicable people alive. They’re shameless, leaving us with just one target: Their clients.

Even the most unscrupulous PR people around know that it usually pays to tell the truth. Why? Because if you lie and it gets out, it’s that much more damaging (and thus, expensive). We need to make it so there’s a high cost associated with shilling.

Let’s fight back

In a world that’s all a-twitter, the problem of shills is going to grow just as fast, or even faster, than the expanding sphere of social media. We need a system set in place to fight back and protect the integrity of online opinion.

What do you think?