Flogs: Fake Blogs

It was inevitable that marketing agencies would seek, with new technology, to harness the amazing power of the grassroots consumer grapevine; after all, we only have six degrees of separation between any of us.

This is why the marketing technique known as "astroturfing" became a common strategy for marketing companies. For instance, a marketer might hire someone to write letters to the editor, under a variety of assumed names, about a cause or a company. This gives the appearance that there is a real community movement in some direction, while in reality there's only a marketing company working for financial gain.

The popularity of blogs has made fake blogs, dubbed flogs, an attractive proposition for marketers today. This is a blog written by a hired writer or team of writers, for the purpose of promoting a business or product. There are actually really good, sound reasons for doing this. Market research has shown that teens and kids respond better to other teens and kids, and blogs are one of the best ways to reach them, kid-to-kid.

The problem? Flogs don't work for this section of the market. The BS-ometer that kids seem to have built-in will go off, and they get caught. One site put up by Sony last year, alliwantforchristmasisapsp.com, was caught and exposed within a couple of weeks, before it really had a chance to go viral. The result? Embarrassed, Sony pulled the site.

No one wants to be sold to by a liar, but some flogs are really good. If you want to catch them, here are a few things to look for:

* Bloggers who seem overly enthusiastic about a mundane or mediocre product, or who are doing nutty things for no apparent reason - like the bloggers who set out to visit all the Wal-Marts in the country in the blog Walmarting Across America.

* Your gut instinct. If you think the topic is just far too dumb to be for real, then you're probably right. Things that marketers think are really cool are rarely the things that real people who buy products think are cool.

* Sites that pop up out of nowhere that are both regularly updated (by supposedly new bloggers) and promoted well. You gotta find the blog to read it. Marketers are really good at helping you find the blog. They may not be quite so good at doing the blog itself.

* Blogs that don't have a healthy list of other blogs they like, especially the aforementioned regular, well-promoted ones. Most blogs spread via other blogs, and flogs don't usually have bloggers who will promote them. Note that this may change in the future, with the encroachment of paid blogging on the free blogging world.

* The domain registration. You can do a whois search on many sites and find out who it's registered to. Sites that are hidden should be suspected. Some flogs are done by really dumb marketers, and the whois will actually turn up the marketing company.

Whether or not flogs are here to stay is questionable. They don't seem to have much longevity, as they get outed pretty quickly. But marketers are good at adapting, and blogging is a really good way of getting grassroots interest going in new products. We'll just have to wait and see.