PressEthic

As consumers' attention spans shrink and their time is increasingly spent on a variety of different media at once, advertisers have been forced to spend more of their time and energy on areas they don't know much about, like blogs. As the following example shows, when advertisers don't do their homework, hilarity often ensues. Basically, a blogger named Tom Coates (of plasticbag.org) wrote a long, emotional post about how he hadn't spoken to his father in 30 years, and upon checking his site later in the day, saw the following comment:

"Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn't seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we'd become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry"

The problem? "Barry" is the corporate brainchild of Cillit, a cleaning product popular in the UK. Apparently the strategy of Cillit is to have "Barry" troll the blogosphere, offering up endearing comments so that others will check out his blog and, if all goes well, buy his product. More stupid than unethical or crass, the story is now one of the top results on Blogdex, one of the most popular listings of the most viewed stories on the 'net.

Long story short...the advertising agency apologized and the man who wrote the blog about his father accepted the apology. But, as Cillit realized, it doesn't look as easy to co-opt the Internet as it was for other media. It's just one example, but the transparency that blogs offer sure is attractive, especially after reading about the influence of PR on the process of journalism.