Bloggers and brands

[homebythesea]

I love blogs, YouTube, Instagram etc but sometimes do wonder what's in it for the brands especially regarding blogger events.

Straight up reviews of things they get sent I totally get- they try things on/ use a face cream, wax lyrical about how great the thing is, people click through and buy said item. Straightforward advertising. No problem with that at all.

But when a blogger is invited to a dinner, or night away at a hotel, or a movie premiere by a brand I just don't get what is worth the expense? From the blogger perspective they get a night out and a goodie bag and maybe even paid to attend. But what does the brand get in return? A brief tag on an Instagram pic, some photos of beautiful place settings at dinner......but not necessarily sales?? These events must cost thousands to put on.

Hopefully someone with some knowledge about these things will enlighten us!

Hi heather. Travel is a really tricky area, I was in the process of booking the holiday when I was offered a small discount in return for a review and the use of my photographs.

With hindsight, it would have been a better idea to mention in my very first Insta post that I was working in collaboration (I would term it that and not an ad as I was only writing a review for them) but I had planned on writing the review and mentioning the collaboration then. However, as I said, hindsight is a useful tool and I’ve learnt from that. The whole landscape of blogging and insta is constantly changing and I do genuinely try and be as open as I can.

heathersmall an advert is a paid-for, controlled, guaranteed piece of media space. So like the ads you see on the sidebars here, or on lots of blogs. The other stuff is all open to the media’s interpretation, and is much more woolly in terms of PR/promotion, but not technically advertising. Theoretically a blogger could be given a heavily discounted holiday and say it’s shit (unlikely, I agree!), or gifted an item they don’t wear, per the posts below.

Brilliant thank you. You see we may have all been very heavily criticised for bringing this subject up but perhaps it might help even bloggers to realise the grey area around advertising/gifting etc.
Perhaps insightful for all?

Ok, so there are gifts which are decline, are never blogged or shown on instagram. Fine.

Then there are the ads which form part of a reciprocal agreement to receive an item for free and post about it. Fine.

What has been raised in this thread is about the gifts which are received and featured in blogs and on Instagram, not sent with an explicit contract to advertise them but "we hope you'll love this and wear it, fingers crossed for us" type note.

These are items which are being taken issue with.

NDAL comes across very badly; she could have written a perfectly good post about women "changing style" without any reference to the IG spat regarding comments made about her friend. And her response to the negative comments - "well, you're just boosting my numbers by even being here, so I don't care what you think" was graceless.

I think both What Lizzy Loves and Dressed as Lamb saw the rush of support to DMBL40 when she was having issues, and thought I’m having some of that. Maybe they’re both fragile souls that need a boost....I don’t know, I don’t know them. But...I think it has spectacularly backfired, I see they’ve come under quite strong criticism, and in fact Dressed as Lamb turned off her comments, not allowing the debate to continue. Well, not before telling everyone she got what she wanted, more traffic. Now I see another blogger is referencing the whole issue too....for what end? I think they need to draw a line in the sand. There is quite a blogger backlash going on at the minute, for whatever reasons, I don’t fully know. And at the minute I feel they are fuelling it.

Thanks for coming on and being part of the discussion Kat.

I don't mind when bloggers are playing catch up with the mutating attitudes and increasing sophistication of their audience. I get that it's a business in its relative infancy.

What is more off putting to me, is when their comments section turns int, frankly, a shitshow. Because one word from the owner of the account would temper the mood.

I unfollowed Susie Verrill last time this happened partly down to her calling us psychos on Instastories (I mean, WTF??!) And half because she not only allowed the most hateful language in her comment section but seemed to agree fully with it. I have no room for that kind of hate in my feed.

I haven't unfollowed you because I don't find you particularly negative unlike SV, but I was disappointed that you let it just devolve into a flurry of name calling. I hope you didn't agree with it all.

Firstly Kat thank you for apologising. I think it's something we don't do nearly enough on here (myself included) and I appreciate it.

You may not be a Mumsnetter yourself but I think posters on a parenting website are very likely to be your demographic so, from a purely business points of view, all comments on here (other than highly personal ones) are worth taking seriously. I would say most concerns are to do with transparency. This isn't just a 'nice to have', it's something your readers - who are, after all, your customers - expect.

I no longer follow any bloggers because once they started to accept sponsorship, they lost the very qualities that made them interesting to me. I was quite pissed off about it at the time but I think I've mellowed! But I remain very interested in the whole 'secret marketing' thing. I'm very uninformed about how it works but I can see that it's beginning to make traditional advertising look clunky and old fashioned. That concerns me, not just as a poster but as a parent and an aunt. Any insights you can give - and I realise they may be limited by your contract with Gleam - would be of great interest.

And then there are the Instagram comments. I don't agree with posters who would like them deleted because I believe that within reason (and we could argue all day about where the boundaries lie) people should be free to say what they think. I also think they're more revealing of the people who make them and that those posters who are themselves bloggers or agencies might wish to reflect on the impression they have made on their potential clients. However (and apologies if you've done this already but I'm not aware of it) I think a statement from you on Instagram would be very welcome.

I agree with pp who said that the name calling on your Instagram post was awful katfarmer It was this, and the fact that it was, at best, left unchecked and at worst, fuelled by you, that made me unfollow you after years of enjoying reading your posts. And I felt sad about that

I agree with pp who said that the name calling on your Instagram post was awful katfarmer It was this, and the fact that it was, at best, left unchecked and at worst, fuelled by you, that made me unfollow you after years of enjoying reading your posts. And I felt sad about that

Agreed, I’ll be honest I’d already unfollowed after the holiday situation. But...was still reading the blog which I did enjoy. However after reading on here about comments like tw#ts and knob heads, I stopped reading the blog too. It all could have been handled so much better. Which I suspect she now sees after Erica Davies fantastic response. Look how differently it was managed. I do know that there was much less negativity about ED, so it was possibly easier. But it would have been so much better to just have addressed the transparency issue and left it at that. Creating a platform (even unintentionally) for name calling was unnecessary.

I unfollowed What Lizzy Loves after her posts over the weekend. I couldn't believe that she let so many nasty comments be posted on her account berating someone for just stating their opinion of her blog. Then she went on to thank everyone for their comments! I was really shocked! I see someone posted that Dressed as Lamb said that it boosted their traffic so actually now it doesn't surprise me as they both have fairly low numbers of followers.

The whole episode reeked of sheer ignorance TBH. Readers are entitled to ask a question, is it bought or is it a gift. Instead of getting an honest reply, there was a barrage of women,'gang mentality', gasping in sheer horror that we might dare to question.
In hindsight, Im hoping you will agree Kat? And as I said earlier I was surprised you didn't remove the posts with the hateful comments as it appeared you might be in agreement with what they said?

I unfollowed What Lizzy Loves after her posts over the weekend. I couldn't believe that she let so many nasty comments be posted on her account berating someone for just stating their opinion of her blog. Then she went on to thank everyone for their comments! I was really shocked! I see someone posted that Dressed as Lamb said that it boosted their traffic so actually now it doesn't surprise me as they both have fairly low numbers of followers.

Yes, I unfollowed her too. And Dressed as Lamb.... I’d never heard of her before, but I found her response quite vile TBH.

Maybe I'm the only one that read it that way, but I did see KF's statement above as a blanket apology for letting the situation arise as it did which would include the SM drama frenzy. Not stated outright perhaps as such, but a lot of mentioning of being misunderstood, etc.

I think WRT to comments on KF's social media accounts what should probably be addressed are the accounts early on in this thread that those that expressed some form of criticism or questioning WRT transparency were deleted and/or blocked from KF's social accounts. Although that goes back in the thread quite a bit and I can't be arsed to look it up again so may very well have been about other bloggers, so apologies if I'm misremembering.

Speaking as a chartered accountant I do think that many bloggers/ instagrammers/ influencers are going to run into some HMRC difficulties in the future. I would strongly advise them to seek some advice now about how they ought to be treating 'gifts' and discounts on holidays etc on their tax returns. Definitely better to do it properly than to face all the stress and expense of an HMRC enquiry. If I were them I would be getting some of my blogger mates together to share the cost of some really good advice.

I hadn't considered the tax on gifts issues before for bloggers. It's an interesting point and one which has to be settled soon, given the way retailers seem to flood the IG/bloggersphere with their latest product and you see umpteen posts from a group of IGers all sporting the same brand.

Also, I'm not convinced about the value of bloggers in promoting small business. I have been approached several times to "work with" bloggers (none of whom have so far been mentioned in this thread). In essence, this has been scouting for at least a discounted, if not free, item. The Marks & Spencers of the world can afford to hand out freebies. As an item-by-item designer/maker, I can't. And tbh, even where bloggers have bought & paid for items from me it has increased my social media following but this hasn't translated into sales. Perhaps my products are just crap! But I guess it could be argued that the hype about follower numbers is not an accurate reflection of influence, at least as far as small businesses are concerned.

what should probably be addressed are the accounts early on in this thread that those that expressed some form of criticism or questioning WRT transparency were deleted and/or blocked from KF's social accounts. Although that goes back in the thread quite a bit

I'm desperately trying to avoid doing any work today so I've had a look back and there's at least one post, on page 12:
She deleted one of my posts on Instagram when I queried whether an item of clothing she was wearing had been gifted

As I've said, I'm more inclined than some of you towards letting insulting comments stand. But equally I believe we should be free to challenge and question posters as much as we like and that, if you are challenged, you should take it on the chin and deal with it without getting in a huff. Deleting questions you don't like, is really not on, in my view.

I have never, to my knowledge, knowingly deleted a comment on my insta that was merely asking whether something I was wearing was gifted and I’m mortified that this has been said. As I’ve said, I always say, at one time (like I mentioned, no I haven’t highlighted it every time the gift is used, just as no one else used to and most still don’t) thank you for the gift so would be happy to acknowledge if it were a gift, were I asked.

If anything was deleted it was completely unintended and I wholeheartedly apologise.

With regards to the comments on my insta post, as I said I’m not in the habit of deleting comments. I do feel that people are allowed their opinion. I personally never mentioned anything disparaging and there as no name calling on my part. I also think that (but can only assume) that people were unhappy, as I was, about untrue assumptions being made that were then stated as fact.

There were also opinions stated on here (alas I’m not going to travel back through the post on here.. sorry sorry sorry...admittedly I am only researching statement jackets but it is work. - and that was meant as tongue in cheek..!!) that were insulting and derogatory about my lifestyle and career. WHICH i don’t have a problem with.. I’ve always said that I put myself out there and people will of course have their own opinion. But I think that stands elsewhere as they do on here.

So heather to answer your question (and hopefully this does!) I didn’t see it as being upset over us being questioned about transparency. Certainly they were all comments I’ve taken on board and listened to. I think (but again I don’t know..) that the objections were made to what I stated in the post about being called out for things that weren’t true!

And once again can I apologise for any typos or not answering questions as I’m trying to answer on my phone! Eyesight and big fat fingers are not my friend....

Yes I think your statements probably were Kat but unfortunately other people who joined that post went on to say it’s got nothing to do with anyone what you get and what you have to tell people (transparency?) and along with their comments were name calling and obscenities. Something which I doubt you would condone, hence people’s upset.

If anything was deleted it was completely unintended and I wholeheartedly apologise.
Fair enough.

With regards to the comments on my insta post, as I said I’m not in the habit of deleting comments. I do feel that people are allowed their opinion.
I agree. But I think you are allowed to challenge those comments or at the very least distance yourself from them, especially when they're being made on your own Instagram feed.

I think personal comments about you and your life are equally out of order, as well as being (at least as far as I'm concerned) irrelevant.

As Flo said, I think personal comments about you and your life are equally out of order, as well as being (at least as far as I'm concerned) irrelevant.

I know I and other posters have had to call out those comments on various occasions. I also have to say MNHQ has been a bit weak on the modding side on this thread, not so much with censoring but allowing posters to retract some of those posts at their request. MN rules usually mean you spout that nonsense you own it.

Flo has hit the nail on the head for me. It was the lack of challenging those posters who were calling us twats and dickheadS that I felt was wrong . I never expected those to be deleted, but felt they should have been challenged. That for me, was when I voted with my feet and it was over. Like I said, I felt sad about it.
It’s not just kat though, CLTS was involved, not dressed as lamb and Lizzy loves have all done similar recently as highlighted by this thread and were equally unprofessional

Yes, I agree with you Flo - I thought it was a shame that Kat didn't challenge the baying mob hurling abuse like that. I had never heard of the other blogs before this thread but the one I have looked at, NDAL, is really unfortunate in its aggression. I don't know the backstory to the post but it was not a pleasant read. It's all left a bad taste in my mouth - guess I won't be following blogs in the future.

KatFarmer since you're here...I unfollowed you during your holiday where it was obvious from the constant tagging and mentions that you were in collaboration with several companies yet it wasn't until day 3 of said holiday you felt the need to address some questions and "come clean" that yes there was indeed an agreement in place. I though it all seemed less than transparent and that you were somewhat "caught out" and begrudgingly had to set the record straight.

Now on here today, you've agreed that with the benefit of hindsight you should have been more upfront and set it all out on day 1. But here's my issue with that. You're not new to this, you're not just suddenly learning how to navigate this new industry. You've been blogging for years and in the grand scheme of things, you're somewhat of a social media veteran who is very experienced at working with brands and delivering on collaborations. At some point you made the conscious decision not to set it all out day 1, knowing full well that you'd received the discount in exchange for posting content. So now you can say you should have handled it differently but that doesn't take away from the fact that you, as a seasoned pro in this industry, made the decision to be less than open and honest with your readers. It wasn't just an oversight. That didn't sit well with me and as a result you lost me as a reader.

I admire you for coming on here and joining the discussion and hope that you soak up all the feedback.

It was me who had their comment deleted on Instagram. During her holiday in Mauritius, I asked her whether the items from Coco Bay Swimwear had been gifted, as Coco Bay had left a message saying “...we had a feeling you’d look bloody great”. My question, and comment, were deleted.

My real question for you, Kat, is when you thank companies on IG, is that because you have received the item as a gift, or are just being polite? My previous example, posted last week, was your recent stay at Belmond Le Manoir. Was that just a lovely night out, or did you receive an incentive to stay (be that a discount, or the night for free)? If it was the latter, a simple thank you isn’t clear enough, as far as I am concerned. That is why you have people questioning everything, including your Anthropology dress and night out at Roka.