We are Bloggers, hear us roar?

Link: Blogs becoming force in advertising | Reuters.com.

Whoo hoo! How about this new research in the Reuters article below?

What does this mean, tho? My immediate thought is that there is a great warning embedded here. Take a study like this and mindlessly apply the results to your thinking, and shift the massive advertising persuasion push to blogs, and you risk killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

You see this happen all the time in television. They get a piece of research that says audiences like "X," and without thinking about WHY audiences like "X," they just turn around and run "X" into the ground, until audiences absolutely HATE "X."

So here's my logic. Advertising is wholeheartedly NOT persuasive. With emotional branding (pathos), it does OK, but audiences are far too savvy to expect advertising to be logical (logos), and most importantly, audiences have been conditioned over time to distrust the source (ethos).

Audiences DO trust close family and friends, word of mouth, MORE THAN ANYTHING.

Insofar as blogs appear to be as trustworthy as close family and friends, audiences will treat them on par with word of mouth recommendations.

However, if bloggers by and large sell out, or if the trust/credibility link-love system fails, if scam-blogs and splogs proliferate and drown out all the signal for their noise, the truths of this study will evaporate as surely as people stopped believing the boy who cried wolf.

It always amazes me how business these days takes a scorched earth approach in pursuit of profit, instead of looking at how longevity and trust matter more than quarterly returns. I mean, what self-respecting capitalist would actually hype a lie or corrupt a source that reaches an actual audience (what should we call blogging payola? blogola?) if it means destroying his or her own future customer base or ability to reach that customer base?

What this research tells me is that when given a choice, people choose authenticity. Sales pitches don't feel authentic, so they are disregarded. Blogs feel authentic, so they are tentatively trusted. Those who promote rampant pitching without regard for authenticity will probably rush in and exploit this source.

Will authenticity be strong enough to win, or will the pitches drive the real audience out of the blogosphere?

Link: Blogs becoming force in advertising�| Reuters.com.

Blogs becoming force in advertising

Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:27pm ET

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Blogs are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products, according to a survey.

An Ipsos MORI poll found that the Internet journals are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or e-mail marketing.

[...]

Ipsos MORI found a direct link between blogs, or user-generated content, and people's intentions to buy goods or services.

Any company that fails to come up to standard should beware. The blog is replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service.

[...]

Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information (24 percent) than television advertising (17 percent) and email marketing (14 percent), the survey commissioned by Hotwire, a technology public relations consultancy, said.

But they still lag behind newspapers (30 percent).

[...]

"Word of mouth is no longer restricted to close friends and family, it can have the same level of influence upon millions of people across the world."