Bloggers and Brands 3

[CookingUpAStormTonight]

New thread I hope.

Honestly, I do think the word #ad gets lost, so how about #advertisement, if we’re really trying to be transparent? And paid partnership, gift, discount, whatever, it’s all an ad, isn’t it, really?

I noticed that today @cooking.

I also noticed that AMR has said she is returning to all things skincare and beauty.

I started following EC because of these threads. Found her quite amusing. But swiftly unfollowed after her Max Factor live make up tutorial yesterday. Reading from a crib sheet on what to mention, saying beauty blenders are not for foundation or application of make up; they're just for blending (whilst actually holding crib sheet and saying "yep, talk about brushes, done that"). It all felt very contrived. I've given myself a talking too and unfollowed most of the handful I was following.

..... is that the same crib sheet that says we all just want to be the best version of me. ffs, it's not even original. I don't follow EC on Instagram - not sure I want to as I mostly like her blogs and worry she will just sell out to be a homogenous instamum.

My understanding is that paid partnership and #ad are interchangeable. It means the brand had some control over what has been posted. Money may or may not have changed hands. It could have been £X to post about a holiday or it could have been a free holiday or it could have been £X plus a free holiday. Obviously the holy grail for influencers is being paid in cash (because you can’t pay the mortgage with a bag etc etc). The paid partnership tag isn’t available to all influencers so you’ll probably only see the larger ones using it to start with. I don’t think there is any material difference between #ad and #spon - the brand has in both cases had some input and there is some payment (cash or in product) involved. I don’t it matters too much whether and how much Anya got paid and whether and to what degree the holiday was funded (although I’m pretty sure from how she has explained it that the holiday was free and they got paid on top). The point is her feed is promoting Disney and as long as we, the readers, know that then i think that’s fine. It’s up to her and her agent to agree the deal with Disney/visit Florida and I hope they have been paid handsomely for it. Print ads cost vast amounts of money to produce and run and the exposure from her IG must be very effective and they have produced all the content/supplied cute child models all themselves.

I agree that a fashion and beauty model promoting Lenor is a new low 😂. Embarrassing, no matter how kitsch she’s tried to present it.

Kat Farmer had this same pickle with her last holiday. If I remember correctly, they were given a discount in exchange for the holiday company to use her photos as publicity. Or similar.

So it wasn't paid for, as they still had to pay for everything else.

In the end (after much questioning by people) she just basically said "we got a discount for this but paid for everything else"

It's a bit unwieldy but it's as clear as day.

So has everything been paid for on the MoD/FOD holiday?

It's not my cup of tea, but if so, an offer like that must be very hard to turn down.

I don't need/want to know how much they are getting paid, but I do think it is important to know the nature of the relationship - it shapes the way the reader perceives the content.

I don't think Kat's disclosure was very clear (and that trip was actually the catalyst for me starting to get me more interested in this topic), she said she received a "small press discount" after being pressed on it, which is pretty ambiguous unless you are a member of the press and know how press discounts are structured. Was it free accommodation but everything else paid for? (Anya alluded to this being how her Martinhal trip worked) - that doesn't sound like a "small" discount to me. But regardless, that was all a long time ago and I am sure any holiday posts Kat did now would look very different and be very open about any deals in place.

I don't really want to know much more about how the relationship is structured with a brand other than whether the brand has compensated them in some way for a post or not. You can see from the comments on MOD/FOD's posts that (some) people are reading their posts with a more healthy degree of scepticism than if the commercial relationship wasn't disclosed. Realising perhaps that there may be more queues than are being shown, that their children may not be picked to go on stage at a character singalong etc. This is why disclosure is important.

Who is AMR?

I saw on stories that EC has sent the Max Factor make up to another instamum as a gift.

Bellaboo- AMR- A model recommends.
Interesting podcast by Emma Guns with Caroline Hirons and Nadine Baggot. Very interesting and in part 2 they discuss the term influencer. In short, they don’t like the term. The implication being you are influencing others to buy stuff they don’t need and are then beholden to the brands. Worth a listen.

Bit cringey for Chloelovestoshop and the Boden cerise coat that she featured as part of her paid partnership for Next Brands - raving about it a few weeks ago, wore it yesterday and in a reply to someone on Instagram yesterday said she might sell it because it was too big.

Makes me wonder if she only picked it for the paid partnership because she knew it would be easy to sell on!

Thanks itsautum.

Instagram seems awash with undeclared freebies - lots of "thanks" but not much #ad or #gifted in my feed still

I also looked at AMR, who I had never heard of before, doing her Lenor ad. Interesting to see the queue of Instamums applauding it. Really is a small, self-congratulatory business community.

AMR flogging Lenor doesn’t irritate me. She’s a model anyway and was offered a paid job promoting it.

I like her , I’m glad she’s out of her ‘woe is me’ funk though, that was hard going.

Dilly dilly, so she got it for free and is now going to sell it and make money? I hope she gives that money to charity

Paintbox if CLTS donates a gifted sale to charity, she’ll be the first. Most bloggers have eBay or Depop accounts, or they announce a “wardrobe clearout” and just set up a selling page on their blogs. Pay attention and most of it will be gifted items from the previous months.

Of course I can’t say for sure the sale money does not go to charity, but you’d think they would say if it did, it would only enhance their profile if they did do such a good deed.

Wow Megan, weve talked a lot about the issue of gifting on here, but being gifted something and then selling it for profit takes it to a whole other level of awfulness for me.

Someone previously mentioned on here (recently had a baby) has a shop my wardrobe page permanently on her blog. She never ever discloses gifts, receives all the big beauty brands new products (e.g. the recent Charlotte Tilbury balloon gift, Bobbi Brown foundation range) regular Jo Malone gift sets, and does stories on new clothes "hauls" that you never see again on her pages. She wears designer labels in real life, not Next. Nearly all of it ends up on this shop page.

Of course, again, maybe it's not declared as a gift because it's all paid for cough

I would like to see all bloggers using #ad or #advert where appropriate, it makes it clear and unambiguous for the reader : this product is only on my blog because I’m being paid to write about it.

My problem with the myriad ways bloggers use to “disclose” those other relationships is that nothing captures the point as well as #ad. Ok they might’ve “only” got the hotel free and had to pay for their flights and meals, but there is no way they would write about that destination if they hadn’t received a substantial incentive to do so.
It feels disingenuous for a blogger receiving ££££s of benefits in kind to conceal this from their readers by saying “thank you for having us” or “thanks to Fancy Hotel”.

Oops I hit post too soon!
Just to summarise my discomfort with the poor disclosure:

A blogger writes about a holiday they booked because they got ££££ worth of hotel accommodation for free. That is the only reason why they are writing about this destination (/“just had to share it” with their readers). Even if they used it as their family holiday for the year, the discount was the reason they picked that destination. But they aren’t honest with their readers about this factor in their decision, and their readers are the whole reason why they’ve been offered this discount / opportunity in the first place. I don’t mind bloggers getting freebies, but don’t try to pretend you are just another mum while showing me pictures of your half price holiday.

Well one could argue that legally, a gift becomes ones own property to dispose of as one wishes.

I doubt she'd see anything wrong with it.