How Much Are Bloggers Influenced By Swag?
January 28, 2009 – 1:16 pm | by Daryl TayAfter my theoretical approach to paying/rewarding bloggers with cash or swag, I found myself to be in such a position recently with the arrival of two True Blood calendars and a Flight of the Conchords cd, both from HBO Asia. I blogged about both without much thought, but now that I’ve let it settle for a couple of days, I’ve decided to try and answer as objectively as possible: how much was I influenced by swag?
My answer is: minimally. Due to two reasons.
1) The products are a fit.
I write about blogger outreach here all the time, and have a regular Music Monday column over on my own blog, why wouldn’t I write about a direct mail effort or a music cd that I received? If I had received, say, a home gardening kit, it would definitely have been harder to talk about.
2) Agenda-setting instead of hypodermic needle
I believe receiving stuff like this is more agenda-setting (giving you a subject to think about), rather than a hypodermic needle (injecting you with their version of the “truth”). This is a popular mass media theory, where I might see reports on crime on the news, and think more seriously about crime in my area, but not necessarily accept the crime rates reported as true. It prompts me to think about a particular subject, but not to accept everything said as truth.
In this particular case, HBO got me thinking about their products, but nowhere did they try and say “this is the best stuff ever” nor try to tell me how awesome they are. I had a cd that which encouraged me to listen to them and come up with my own conclusions.
Would I have blogged about either True Blood or Flight of the Conchords otherwise? Maybe, maybe not. I am a big TV watcher, but vampire shows aren’t my thing. However, I am always on the lookout for new and exciting music. I think what this particular blogger outreach exercise has done is empower me to talk about them, regardless of how I feel. When I hear someone talk about FotC (as it randomly happened last Friday), it enables me to jump into the conversation and even offer to share the cd. While I’m not a fan of the vampire genre, if I hear someone talking about True Blood, I can always say “hey, you’d appreciate a copy of this calendar I got.”
Ultimately I think the result is to organically encourage conversations, positive negative or neutral. I hope to be in a position to carry out an outreach programme and ask bloggers how they felt about it after the fact someday!
Tags: agenda setting, direct mail, flight of the conchords, fotc, hbo asis, hypodermic needle, music cd, music monday, paying bloggers, swag, true blood
