I do think there is a difference between content produced by an individual and one by and organization though. Consumers know not to ‘trust’ an organization in the sense that they have an agenda and are trying to sell you something. And most trusted content sources, like say newspapers, have always ensured to keep a pretty clear line between editorial and marketing. Your average person in the past has been a ‘trusted content source’ in the sense that they are offering their own true opinions. There may be some inherent bias, but when it comes to Pepsi vs Coke they are saying what they truly prefer, with no external incentives from the brand (only implicit incentives based on brand image conveyed, etc). And why wouldn’t they? It’s not been possible to really ’sponsor’ an individual until now.

And that’s where I start to get interested not just in the implications of this particular campaign, but what it could mean if you blew it out on a much bigger level through an affiliate marketing / loyalty / influencer programme. i.e. what do programmes like this look like in two, three years time? Where are the lines clear, and where does it start to get blurry? Tesco is in the process of re-launching it’s loyalty programme at a cost of $500 million. With that type of financial backing and it’s status as a business-critical marketing driver, I can see this type of “participation points” idea evolving in many different directions. Some positive, some not.

Either way agree wholeheartedly that it is a very interesting experiment and looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Ford and the rest of us will learn lots from it.

Hi Daan, thanks for the comments, interesting point about the hashtag requirement. I think Ford is clearly aware of laws around word-of-mouth disclosure if nothing else, but agree it is (mostly) being approached in the spirit of transparency and disclosure, which is more than you can say for many WOM campaigns.

Good Unilever example, and I should point out that I’ve seen another participation points example previously with the Microsoft Microphone consumer feedback programme based on Facebook. Which is why I’m posting this I guess — I see this as the cusp of a trend rather than a one-off, and am interested in where this trend is heading, for good and bad.

Thanks again Alex and Daan for your thoughts, great comments both.

This is a very interesting campaign. I do completely agree that it feels slightly uncomfortable that people are ‘rewarded’ for posting brand related content. However, I do like the creativity of the campaign. Social media is still a very new element of the communications mix and companies are still trying to find their way around it. Whilst some may overstep the mark, sometimes that’s needed to find the mark in the first place.

The ethical lines are definitely blurring and it can often be hard to judge initiatives such as this. It reminds me of what Unilever are doing - http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/unilever-offers-cash-for-consumer-feedback/ The campaign is different in that their objective is gathering qualitative information, rather than exposure, but it’s another reward based system.

One key aspect for me is transparancy and full disclosure. Considering the fact that the contestants only get rewarded when they use a certain hashtag fits this criteria. In that sense I feel the company has fullfiled their duty and it is up to the individual to make sure that their content stays relevant and interesting to their followers.

I agree they have slightly dropped the ball on their criteria and it’s a shame that they have opted for such a traditional measurement approach with a very creative and innovative campaign. You would have thought that a company with an internal social media specialist would have known better.

I do think there’s a future for this kind of marketing, and certainly any blogger/other social media micro-celeb presented with an opportunity like this from a brand will have to weigh his or her options before accepting. The choice is not all that dissimilar from the one any content site needs to make when weighing the extent to which advertising will become a part of its user experience. Go too far with it, and you risk disrupting what people came to your site for in the first place. There’s no difference with the content produced by an individual vs. the content produced by a large corporation, but each content producer has to carefully weigh how they participate, being fully cognizant of their own brand and their own users.

This campaign relies quite a bit on the discretion of each individual blogger/micro-celeb to do it the right way. And in this case, I think incentives are absolutely aligned– each of the participants in the campaign have an absolute incentive to not appear to be a sell-out, to not lose their following, and to keep their brand in tact. All the while, Ford (and everyone else) gets to sit back and watch 100 mini-case studies for how to (and how not to) integrate branded content into an existing un-monetized content stream.

And that’s something that I’m looking forward to.

-Alex
twitter.com/alexgmorrison

Yup, great points. Rewarding the ‘quantity’ of content posted is a very simplistic and surprisingly naive way of looking at the value of social media participation. Quantity does not necessarily equal quality, value or results.

I have a feeling Ford may change their minds on this one. Using Flickr as an example, some of the agents are posting reams of fairly low-quality images to Flickr, which is actually creating noise and distracting from the good-quality images. Rewarding based around the conversation and engagement around agent contributions makes a lot more sense to me as well.

Definitely will be interested to see if Ford is able to use the framework of the missions to drive a compelling narrative out of this that will engage a brand audience, or whether it will simply result in a wave of brand-spam in the social media echo chamber.

Geoff

Very good point, although I think the model is shifting away from ‘control’ which is a very broadcast oriented principle and towards ‘influence’. I think we’d all been hoping and advocating for companies to create influence by doing good things, things that are worth talking about naturally and organically. But the reality is of course more complicated.

As social media becomes more and more clearly tied towards business success, organizations will be tempted and potentially rewarded by exerting more direct influence over consumers via schemes like this. And if people get the message that their influence and advocacy is a resource they can sell, via affiliate schemes or promotional programmes, then that does change the game for everybody.

And who to say this isn’t valid if people are simply being rewarded for their time and effort, for saying and doing things they might have done anyway. Where it gets messy for me is when people do and say things to their networks that they wouldn’t otherwise, because of the reward involved. Maybe for most people this is a non-starter, but I think it does raise the possibility of social networks getting flooded with brand-related spam, coming from compensated advocates.

Interesting times ahead…

Geoff

The gaming aspect to this is vital, but I feel like they’ve missed a trick on 2 levels:

1). Personally, I’d like the comments, retweets st al the be worth more than the uploads. It’s the conversations that are more valuable than the content (uploading 100 images to Flickr with no comments is pointless compared to 1 image with 100 comments)

2). As has been proven with Digg, it only needs a fraction of the 100 agents hired to monopolize the headlines. It will be interesting to see how the flood of content maintains its authenticity and value amongst the noise of 99% of the stuff that’s generated.
That aside, the crux of whether this will work wholly depends on the missions.

I’d like to see agent missions interwoven amongst different skillsets, so that there are fewer missions as the 6 months progress, so that previous missions relate to up and coming ones; essentially the concept of many little ripples combining into a big ’splash’.

Definitely be keeping a close eye on this one.