december-2009

DECEMBER 2009 | UNITED.COM
66 industry
of their wares. “I want to promote your
product the best that I can.” While she
reserves the right not to post about a
product that does not seem relevant,
she adds quickly, “To date, I have not
received an item for review that I did
not feel fi t my website or my readers.”
“It started with coupons,” says
Lynette Young, whose marketing fi rm,
Purple Stripe Productions, focuses on
social media. “Then samples. Then it
was the full product, and then it went
on to sending samples to give away
in sponsored contests.” For instance,
Nicole Feliciano of MomTrends, a
New York City–based shopping site
for moms that gets 15,000 visitors
a month, has received upward of 60
strollers for review. “Everything I write
about, I’ve touched, seen and worked
with personally,” she explains.
“I wish that, at this point, I did a little
more just writing,” sighs Naomi Shapiro,
an attendee of the Ninja Prep demo
who writes SuperDumbSuperVillain.
“The review part has kind of, over time,
taken over the personal blogging more
than I would like. We are all reviewing
the same things these days.”
Some are taking the idea of “reviews”
even further. Over at ClassyMommy,
Colleen Padilla’s disclosure page states
upfront that posts can be purchased.
Is ClassyMommy, which has received
more than 1,500 products for review,
still a blog or a new kind of advertising?
And what about Frito-Lay’s “Fab15”
bloggers and the “Frigidaire Test Drive
Moms,” gaggles of hand-selected mom
bloggers who regularly receive goods
from these brands to post about them?
“It used to be the majority of mom
bloggers were really great quality,”
says Ellen Diamant, half of the übersuccessful
duo behind Skip*Hop,
creators of a ubiquitous diaper bag and
other baby gear. “But now we get crazy
requests like, ‘Here is my blog. Send
me stuff .’ And you go and look, and it’s
really poorly done.”
“We vet so many requests a day,”
says Tricia Chan, whose PR fi rm
Public Group reps big names including
Maclaren strollers. Many a parent,
Chan says, salivates at the thought of a
free buggy. “It went from ten or twenty
requests a month to forty a week.” At
the beginning of the mommy/daddy
blogging boom the requests were no big
deal. “Before, we’d just send it,” she says.
“Now you have to look into analytics
and see who they’re hyperlinked to.”
“I want to promote your product the
best that I can,” one malleable mom blogger
promises on her site.
The situation has raised eyebrows
over at the Federal Trade Commission,
which recently announced that it was
changing the rules governing blogs
(not just the mommy blogs), as well
as Facebook and Twitter. Beginning
December 1, bloggers must disclose
paid posts, sponsored posts and items
received for free.
“Is it really possible that someone
could attend an all-expenses-paid trip
to a desirable location to see a fi fty
dollar product demonstration, leave
and write that they hated it?” wonders
Jeremiah McNichols, half of the duo
behind Z Recommends, a consumeradvocacy
parenting blog. “I suppose
it’s possible. But it does not appear to
happen.” That’s what worried the FTC:
Even if such posts aren’t advertising
per se, it can be hard to separate the
sponsored from the genuine.
Predictably, the rules change has
come under furious assault on First
Amendment grounds. But whatever
happens with the new mandate,
marketers are learning to tread
carefully on the info superhighway.
It turns out, not all bloggers are
equally malleable. “There are mom
bloggers who will go and bash a
product, and people are worried about
that,” says Diamant.
Take McNichols and his wife,
Jennifer, at Z Recommends. The site,
which began in 2006 as a way for the
couple to discuss the products they
were using while raising now-fi veyear-old
Zella, has become the Upton
Sinclair of parent blogs, spending
months researching, for instance,
which companies were using BPA—a
compound that has been shown to
damage the endrocrine system when
ingested in large quantities—in the
production of sippy cups and bottles.
The couple found that a number of
companies promoted as green were
using the chemical and administered a
tough-love digital spanking.
Recently, a number of mom bloggers
have been promoting a voluntary code
of ethical conduct called Blog with
Integrity. It reads, in part, “When
collaborating with marketers and
PR professionals, I handle myself
professionally and abide by basic
journalistic standards.” Presumably
they also play nice and keep their
hands to themselves, too, just as mom
and dad always said.
SARAH WILDMAN writes for some of the
world’s top newspapers, but her baby kind of
wishes she got more swag.
DECEMBER CROSSWORD ANSWERS