‘Sponsored conversation’ is not the future

Here’s the thing. Forrester’s new report on the cost-effectiveness of brand sponsored conversation - incentivising or paying social media voices to talk about a product - is rather beguiling. Surely so long as transparency is maintained, social media will self-regulate, as Nicky Tillyer comments under this fairly approving Adweek piece:

“as long as there is transparency then people are still free to judge the comments as either meaningful or meaningless… bloggers who value their communities will not be unfaithful”.

And as Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff says, “Bloggers gotta eat, and marketers gotta market”, right?

But then we stop for a moment, and think. We imagine we aren’t talking about social media. We watch some old Bill Hicks. We read this short story by Hari Kunzru that appeared in The New Yorker last year, describing a world in which bright young things have become cynical marketing whores. We undeniably feel uncomfortable when we think about this scenario applying to our real lives, so how on earth have we got to a position where this seems not just acceptable in social media, but good?

Many people are of course canny enough to take what they can get from brands and still protect the independence of their opinions. Some transparent sponsored collaborations may well be creative, ethical and successful. But ’sponsored conversation’ seems an absolute step away from the rearticulation of the brand/consumer relationship which we have slowly, gloriously, seen emerging in social media. For once, brands have begun to realise that here is a space where they can’t just throw money and get what they want. Are we really ready to backslide?

My main concern is that sponsored conversation moves brands away from listening, and back to trying to shout. Who cares if you’re relevant or interesting enough to people, if you can jump over all those obstacles and push your message out there by fiscal force? Even if sponsored conversations manage to remain independent and informative, they are profoundly different to personal, emotional, inspired conversations that have been ignited by shared passion and a sense of discovery, with consumers and brands meeting on an equal footing. By paying for conversation, brands indicate that all their consumers are motivated by is money - a patronising and unimaginative attitude. I’d far rather see both brands and consumers strive to abandon the financial power games, however briefly, and meet as equal people who want to listen to what each other have to say. 

Creativity, collaboration, independence and originality are the true currency of social media. They are what brands and consumers should be sharing and exchanging both on and offline. Sure, money will come into the process when consumers decide whether to shell out for their products and services in the end. But in the small, sacred spaces in between, let’s keep trying to do something different.

Brought into the world on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.