Last week a couple of the team attended a WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) seminar regarding best practice for working with bloggers in social media. At Neoco we’re proud of our involvement with WOMMA (Benn is a co-founder of WOMMA UK) and we think that an ethical approach to Social CRM is not just a good idea, it’s essential.
As the industry matures and becomes increasingly sophisticated, guidelines are key to protect both consumers and marketers and to make sure that everything is open and transparent. Long-term, industry self-regulation is vital in order to negate the need for legislative solutions driven by political expediency.
Both in the US and now in the UK, WOMMA have defined a Code of Ethics and a set of Standards of Conduct in order to set an initial framework through which this self-regulation can take place. Much of this framework is common sense, such as the rules involving advertising to minors. A core element of the Standards however, revolves around disclosure of either identity, relationships or compensation. In short, marketers are expected to ensure that any online contacts they use for promotional purposes are honest and up front about who they are, how they are connected and how they have benefited. Examples of this could be a blogger who had received items to review or who had been given free items as promotional competition prizes.
It makes sense that the onus should lie with marketers themselves to regulate their contacts and activities – much as they would clear any other element of a campaign. Equally, key advocates and influencers shouldn’t really have a reason not to be open about being brand ambassadors. However, WOMMA are clear that the purpose of the Standards is not to stifle editorial opinion but rather to make it obvious to consumers when bloggers have a connection to brands or agencies. There is no reason why disclosure should be either complicated or obstructive: it could be as easy as saying: “I was sent this by X”.
During the seminar some of the discussion talked about the idea that in the near future blogs could include a standard “disclosure and relationships” section which clarifies how they work and what marketing they are connected to. Further debate centred around how marketing messages on Twitter could be identified with hash tags such as #ad and #spon (for advert and sponsored respectively).
WOMMA’s work is very much a work in progress so far, but it’s important for the industry to have both a position to debate and a set of guiding principles to aim towards. It’s also a good indicator of a firm’s reliability – after all, if all things are equal, wouldn’t you rather work with a company which has signed up to an industry wide set of ethical guidelines, rather than a company which has no position at all?
The WOMMA Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct can be found at http://www.womma.org/ethics/code.
If you would like to have an informal chat to Benn about ethical Social CRM or WOMMA UK and the work they carry out, contact him here: http://www.neoco.com/benn.
Tags advertising Benn Achilleas bloggers Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct conduct digital marketing Ethical ethics legislation neoco social CRM social media Twitter womma womma uk wommauk word of mouth