0.026: free speech, blogketing and mojo

Robin Harris has gotten around to reading some of my posts on blogketing (beware of blogketing and blogketing and revenue recognition) and my belief that it is the responsibility of corporate bloggers to comply with the same standards as for any other marketing collateral. Robin seems to have taken issue with my position, slinging the First Amendment back at me. In doing so, Robin has effectively twisted my position into one that bears little resemblance to what I said or meant.

And he has every right to do that, without question, and we all defend that right daily.

But the point I have tried to make is NOT that bloggers can't freely express their opinions in their blogs, whether they blog on a corporate-sponsor site or not. No, my point is that when you blog under the banner of your company's logo, your blog must then be held to a higher standard for factual representation of your company and its products (note the clear distinction between "opinion" and "product facts" here).

Apparently, most of you agree with me (so far, anyway).

I sat down this morning and wrote a response to Robin that was simply too long to post as a comment on his blog. So although I really don't intend for my own blog to erode into an ongoing debate on blog-etiquette, I did open this can of worms, so I guess I have no choice but to chew.

So my response to Robin becomes this morning's post...

an open comment to 'storagemojo'

Robin -

You may not be aware of the restrictions and liabilities that people who develop PR and Marketing Collateral are faced with. At the expense of repeating myself for the sake of clarity, I'd like to refocus the discussion on this point.

In commerce today, it is no longer permissible to claim that your product does something that it can't - a rule that extends from both truth-in-advertising laws (designed to protect consumers) and from the SarBox truth in disclosure requirements (designed to protect investors). And these rules are enforced with FASB revenue recognition guidelines that prohibit a company for recognizing moneys collected for product capabilities that have not yet been delivered. The intent is to make sure that companies don't sink large "income" into their coffers before completing the "expense" of delivering the products, creating an artificial perception of "profit." I'm sure you're aware of at least some of the corporate misdeeds that lead up to the creation of these rules.

As a direct result of these rules, today you can look at virtually any product web site, and you'll rarely if ever see claims for future product capabilities anymore. Even consumer goods and reseller sites will list "Expected Availability" dates for products announced well before they are ready to ship (e.g., the iPhone) - they can advertise the phone, and even collect money for it, but they can't post the revenue until they actually deliver the products.

On the direct-marketing front, by and large, these days discussions of "futures" are limited to 1-on-1 discussions covered by non-disclosure agreements (which I know you despise). Further, most companies will preface an NDA futures disclosure with additional conditions, including specific direction that the information is "non-binding," "for planning use only" and "not necessarily a commitment to deliver" - legalese designed specifically to avoid the revenue recognition concerns should a customer purchase the current products based on expectations of the future capabilities.

Being that you don't work inside a product company, you may not see all this, but I'm sure you've felt the effects. Even those NDA's that you dislike so much are an important part of the revenue recognition and truth-in-advertising guidelines that companies must comply with these days. Specifically, they help to ensure that the future product information isn't being disseminated without the associated disclaimers, which could lead to a public belief that the features described under NDA "futures" were actually available in the "present." In fact, as it has been explained to me, the FASB rules would prevent a company from recognizing revenue on a product even if someone like yourself was the one who told the customer that our product did something it doesn't yet. As you can expect, Corporate Finance doesn't like having their revenue recognition being held in the hands of anyone outside of the company.

With that background, my beef isn't against blogketing in general - in fact, I freely admit that what I do is just that (as do you and all the rest of us, in fact).

No, my stated concern is for corporate bloggers who blatantly (and perhaps intentionally) obfuscate the "future" capabilities as if they were "present;" who exaggerate their products capabilities and benefits in extremes that would never be allowed to be printed in a corporate press release, data sheet, white paper, launch webcast or web site. As I said, nothing wrong with posting an opinion, or even with full-disclosure "in the future, our product X will be able to YY." And I'm not talking about mere "gilding the lily" or "highlighting the positives" here - I'm referring to specific attempts to describe current products in terms of future capabilities, with no disclosure of what is "now" vs. what is "then."

And in the specific case my blog post was referencing, the blogger in question had made posts that directly contradicted statements he made during the launch webcast of the products he was referring to. Those blog statements had been reflected in a widespread acceptance that the products could in fact do things today that had been specifically announced as "not available until the future." I called that a foul. The industry press picked up on my foul call, and found in fact that there had indeed been a "misunderstanding" about said products' capabilities, with the blogger in mention acknowledging that I had my facts right about his company's products. Oh, and he changed his blog to more accurately reflect "future" where appropriate.

blog smart

Microsoft's Blog Policy is "Blog Smart." I argue that this applies to everyone, both those whose blog flies the corporate logo, and those (like mine) that are more loosely connected. And in fact, no blogger should be posting mistruths; if something I say on my is misleading or outright incorrect, I expect you all will challenge me and/or discount my expertise, and I'll pay the price. And the same should be true for any corporate blogger, even the well-respected ones such as those you cite.

But IMHO, a corporate blogger also has an ethical and fiduciary responsibility for factual representation of his company's products and services in his or her blog, to the same level of accuracy as her/his company would require for any other logo'd collateral they produce.

That's my position: Plain and simple.

And as I've already noted, the current majority of those who have chosen to vote on this topic appear to agree with me...but if you haven't voted yet, please do.

Comments

[Barry Whyte]

I have to agree in principle from a personal perspecive, as my blog is hosted on IBM's external website I do think that anything I say does reflect back on IBM as a whole - despite any and all disclaimers that these are my own opinions. Its human nature, just like those van's that have "how's my driving - call xxx" The way the van is driven does not directly influence the day to day running of the company he is driving for, but in other road users eyes it does reflect directly on the company. I'd agree that its the same in the blogsphere.