:: By Rachael Powell, Word of Mouth Marketing Associate

Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled with a teaching DVD company named Legacy Learning Systems Inc. for failing to follow the FTC’s disclosure guidelines requiring disclosure when any “material connection” with advertisers exists. Legacy Learning allegedly asked members of their affiliate program to post reviews of their products on Amazon. After selling more than $5 million worth of guitar lessons DVDs, the FTC said without disclosure that reviewers were receiving sales kickbacks, Legacy Learning was duping the average consumer. Legacy Learning’s punishment? A $250,000 penalty and ongoing monitoring of their affiliate marketers.

This is the first major move the FTC has taken to enforce the guidelines. After their late 2009 release, everyone from Mashable to The New York Times wondered how it would affect blogger relations and whether or not the FTC would actually be able to enforce them on marketers and advertisers. Until now, we’ve only seen the FTC govern the rule with a slap on the wrist for Ann Taylor LOFT’s work with fashion bloggers.

Disclosure is the right thing to do…

Our Word of Mouth Marketing team has always believed in and followed the WOMMA code of ethics in our work, but these guidelines make this practice even more important. It is now not just our duty to be ethical advertisers, but it’s also the law.  But everyone knows this, right?

…but who else is doing it?

Well, maybe not. A study published by IZEA in September 2010 showed that 35 percent of PR, social media and marketing professionals had not heard of the guidelines and another 35 percent had heard of them but did not understand them. That means less than a third of marketers even have a hope of accurately follow the guidelines.

Just do it!

If you need more than ethical and legal reasons to encourage disclosure in your work with bloggers, here’s a more self-serving reason. A 2008 study found that disclosure of affiliation led to greater trustworthiness and goodwill. The same study also found that consumers were more likely to pass along a message when the source of the message disclosed an affiliation.

So if ensuring disclosure in your work with advocates will not only warm your heart and keep you out of jail, but also increase your word of mouth potential, what are you waiting for?

More About Rachael:
Twitter: @rachaelcpowell
LinkedIn: Rachael Powell

Tommy Tutone - "Jenny (867-5309)"

:: By Kevin Dugan, Marketing Director

With apologies to the classic song shown above: “I got it, I got it! I got your number on the Facebook wall!”

News that Facebook will make user phone numbers and addresses available to external sites is generating an understandable and expected outcry. 

“The plan to open up users' address and phone numbers to third-party sites and services marks the latest frontier in Facebook's often controversy-fraught efforts to encourage users to be more liberal in sharing their data and online activity.” Via HuffPo 

Facebook’s continual nips and tucks to its privacy policy are accompanied by the usual reactive approach to user awareness. We’ve seen this play out more than a few times during the six year old site’s existence. It’s consistent if nothing else.

Free Sites and User Entitlement
Users spending more time than they care to admit on sites like Facebook tend to develop a sense of entitlement. “I’m storing MY data on this site, Facebook owes ME.” And while I can understand this sentiment, I don’t agree with it. Facebook owns the site. Read their terms of service and learn what else they own. And with more than 600 million readers and display ad revenues that will eclipse Yahoo in the coming year, they’ve also got gravity.

Consumers need to take greater personal accountability for their personal privacy. I say this as a fellow consumer and not a marketer. As a marketer, I see an opportunity that has NOTHING to do with the user data Facebook is making available.

Proactive Privacy: Marketers stand to earn a lot of consumer trust if they sound the alarm on these changes. Facebook is not doing it. Legal would plotz if they thought I was trying to make a brand accountable for Facebook with their customer base. I’m not saying they should and need to think through this point. But as marketers create in depth customer profiles that include social data, we should understand the implications Facebook creates and identify opportunities to help our customers do the same. 

What does privacy mean to YOUR consumer? This should guide your decisions on how much you should become involved in privacy issues and trends. At a minimum brands need to be aware of them.

Personally, I’m wondering if I don’t have a startup opportunity here. Consider a company that can help consumers easily centralize and note the various data they’ve shared with sites and, more importantly alert them to changes in the terms of service for those sites. A Google search may show me it’s been done, but there’s some value to a company that can help consumers become aware of the byzantine morass of privacy details and their implications.

More About Kevin:
Twitter: @prblog 
LinkedIn: Kevin Dugan

Cross-posted to my personal blog.

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media-convergence-tells-a-transmedia-back-story-HfuorlzthIExdAvBDJkD.zip (298 KB)

A flurry of examples comes to mind when looking at how traditional media is embracing the No Channels trend of media convergence.

Tumblr has attracted several media outlets, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Life (shown above), Rolling Stone (sand The Atlantic. The platform offers social media capabilities and an unassuming ability to tell a powerful back story -- connecting with readers through bonus content.

Turn the Page?
Magazine's second wind can be more directly attributed to the tablet. Print editors are tapping their creativity to take to take full advantage of audio, video and direct interaction with the user.

Print isn't dead. In fact, people are now reading more than ever thanks to social platforms, smart phones, tablets and e-readers.

Tommy Can You Hear Me Now?
My favorite example of traditional media tapping into transmedia storytelling comes from NPR. The public radio icon has expanded into social media in a big way, expanding beyond podcasts into full blown transmedia storytelling across its website, YouTube, Flickr and mobile apps in addition to the de rigueur Twitter and Facebook.

It's photo blog, The Picture Show, helps tell a rich back story the air waves cannot illustrate. More recently the media outlet has also been a steady contributer to Instagram, the upstart photography app with more than 1.5 million users in just a few short months.

NPRs mastery of blended media hit me as I parsed through some recent tweets on my iPhone (shown above). NPR's photo blog tweeted a request for content. It's seemingly innocuous.

But consider what the following statement would have looked just five years ago: "I read on my smart phone, via Twitter, that a radio outlet needs images." Keep in mind that Twitter was not launched publicly until July 2006. So five years ago this would not have made any sense at all.

This "sound example" helps us see just how much media has converged.

Why some advertisers are pulling from the Super Bowl

By:: Amanda Duncan

It’s not easy to come up with a Super Bowl ad that will be remembered for years to come. More or less most Super Bowl ads end up being one-hit wonders. Not every Super Bowl has ads like Apple’s “1984”, the famous Budweiser “buuuud, wiiiise, errrr” frog commercial, or Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” that re-launched Betty White’s career.  Some advertisers are feeling the urge to pull from the Super Bowl ad line up. Last year Pepsi pulled its ads from the Super Bowl after 23 consecutive years and used the cost of Super Bowl advertising to form their “Pepsi Refresh Project”. Was it worth the gamble for Pepsi? Some say it was while others label the decision to not participate in the Super Bowl as a failure. Pepsi must have had a change of heart because this year they are back with ads for Super Bowl XLV. Nevertheless, the decision to not be in the Super Bowl in 2010 gave Pepsi a huge amount of media coverage. This year will be no exception.

This year Denny’s has made the decision to not be a part of Super Bowl XLV after having a Super Bowl advertisement for the past two years (2009 and 2010). When asked why Denny’s wouldn’t participate in this year’s Super Bowl, Frances Allen, Chief Marketing Officer at Denny’s said, “It is a very expensive exercise and I don't believe it's necessary for us to continue to put all our eggs in one basket.” She said that the decision to quit the Super Bowl train was a process based strategy and Denny’s will focus on continuity in 2011. However, the extra media coverage doesn’t hurt.

Despite the hype over Super Bowl advertisements, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more advertisers pull out from the Super Bowl in the future. By pulling from the Super Bowl, Denny’s saved an estimated $3 million dollars for a 30 second spot and made headlines for doing so. I mean come on be honest. Do you remember the Denny’s Super Bowl ads in 2009 and 2010? I’d be impressed if you did. I believe Denny’s made a wise choice this year.

More about Amanda:

 LinkedIn: Amanda Duncan

New Search Engine Improves Results

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

 By:: Chris Blum, Search Marketing Strategist

A new way to search the web has been created through the use of slashtags.  The Blekko search engine uses content “tagging” to help filter search results to give users more relevant content. According to an article by the Associated Press, “Tagging is used to organize photos on Yahoo Inc.’s Flickr, Web site bookmarks on Yahoo’s del.icio.us and video on Google Inc.’s YouTube,” and now your search results.

A slashtag is essentially a tool that is designed to filter through search results, and only serve users with specific sites related to their search.  More importantly, slashtag search helps eliminate a large percentage of spam sites that are typically returned in normal search engines. 

The Power of the Slash
All you need to do to create a slashtag is insert a “/” after your search query. For example, if I type in Marketing/Twitter into Blekko’s search it will give me by date, tweets that incorporate marketing. You can create your own set of slashtags that encompass your favorite sites, or use Blekko’s preset slashtags found here. Blekko even searches through Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Amazon for related search content.

Blekko’s search engine adds slashtags to search queries to better organize results into one of its seven preset categories:  health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels.

This is an interesting way to search, and it can help return better search results that are tailored to the user.  With digital content expanding, filtering search results has become even more essential. It will be interesting to see if Blekko carves out a niche for itself alongside search giants like Google, YouTube, Yahoo and Bing.

A tweet linking to the U.S. Army's Social Media Handbook snowballed into this post. The handbook joins the U.S. Air Force's popular Rules of Engagement for Blogging as a mainstream example of the military's grasp of social media. This made me wonder about the Navy's, Marines' and even the Coast Guard's social media presence.

While Wikileaks might make some assume otherwise, the U.S. military has a forward approach to, and an extensive investment in, social media to help tell its story, connect troops with their families and even to mine military intelligence.

Social Storytelling
The Army's SlideShare presence may seem out of character -- until you examine all of this branch's social media efforts. The Department of Defense links to more than 1,100 individual Army accounts/pages across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr alone. The Army's online game has become a popular recruitment tool and it offers a variety of mobile apps and downloads.

Family Ties
Connecting soldiers to their families through social media is an obvious win. And consider that the armed forces have had a social media policy in place since World World II. While social media can't replace in-person contact, it can certainly help offset the impact of being away from family and friends.

Military Intelligence -- The Other Side of Wikileaks
According to The New York Times, the military uses "social networking skills to hunt insurgents." Threat surveillance and training are both aspects of social media that help inform and prepare the military.

According to Guy Hagen's Intel 3.0 blog: Just as the USDOD is conscious about having critical information leaked out through the blogs of U.S. military personnel, it sees opportunity for finding clues to future threats and terrorist activities in social media, particularly those relating to particular geographic regions or communities.

With the various social media uses, sites and assets the military claims, it's no surprise WIRED and Gartner point to the U.S. Defense's approach as the new standard -- eliminating its social media office and making it part of everyone's role.

Additional Resources
Click here for a curated list of related links.
For a Twitter list of Military, Government and Related Twitter Accounts, click here.

Cross-Posted to my personal blog, Strategic Public Relations.

More About Kevin:
Twitter: @prblog 
LinkedIn: Kevin Dugan

:: By Amanda Duncan, PR/Marketing Intern

Google is introducing its first ever online science fair. This makes me think back to my own science fair, all the tables set up in the gymnasium and each student displaying their project proudly. I remember my project; I chose the effects of different lighting on plants. Oh the memories.

What Google is doing is an interesting concept, to take an event so nostalgic and bring it to the online community.   In fact, social media is essentially people using technology to emulate offline behaviors online. This is another example of how digital is integrating into our everyday lives. More and more society is using technology to create new childhood memories through online interaction. On the flip side, Yahoo points to a list of things that won’t be a part of childhood memories for anyone born this year.

Google will post the top 60 projects online and will award a People’s Choice Award to the student with the most online votes.

The competition is open to full-time students age 13 to 18.  Prizes include a 10 day trip to the Galapagos Islands, a $50,000 scholarship, and a personalized color mosaic of each team member done by LEGO.  Top 15 finalists will be flown to Google Headquarters to present their projects to a team of acclaimed scientists.

Through online integration Google is giving students around the world the opportunity to show their intelligence via online outlets to the entire world, creating a unique memory for each participant.  To learn more about the Google science fair visit their website.

For more ways of how digital is impacting our lives visit www.nochannels.com.

More About Amanda:
LinkedIn: Amanda Duncan

 :: By Kevin Dugan, Marketing Director

Paid, owned and earned media are blending thanks to digital technology. As digital technology threads through silos we once used to organize media, it is dissolving these silos.

Pete Blackshaw , calls this a disruptive trend for 2011. Several social media professionals, including Brian Solis and Jay Baer, point to 2011 as a year of convergence in one form or another.

It’s a topic we’ve been discussing for some time now and it’s going to be an interesting experience for consumers and brands. 

Join the Conversation
We created No Channels to track the conversation and curate examples we’re seeing in the media (traditional and citizen-powered) of channels blending together. It’s armed with the video, infographic, Flickr Group and articles that underscore how digital technology is dissolving traditional media silos.

And we also want to hear from you.

So stop by the site and weigh in with your opinion.

More About Kevin:
Twitter: @prblog
LinkedIn: Kevin Dugan