Issues tied to transparency, authenticity and reputation management are becoming more significant for marketers, brought to life through recent commentary, marketing programs, blogs and attempts at measurement.

If you haven’t read, Gawker launched The Consumerist, a blog that promises to help shoppers bite back against “shoddy products, inhumane customer support, and half-assed service.” Given Gawker’s prominence in the blogging community as well as the biting commentary that drives its appeal it should be a scary place for products and brands that don’t deliver the goods.

Modern Marketing posted today on Mozilla’s call for consumer testimonials on Firefox 1.5 – referring to the effort as “Open Mike” branding.” The blog raises the question all corporate executives and marketers should now ask themselves – what would people really say if you gave them a video camera and asked them to say exactly what they thought, without any censorship or direction, about your product or service? Time will come soon when consumers force that question to be answered, especially as more Consumerist-like sites and Dell-Hell bloggers enter the fray.

Speaking of Dell-Hell, a group out of the UK developed a whitepaper showing how Jeff Jarvis’s relentless ranting on Buzzmachine was influential in shaping impressions of Dell’s customer support. While determining the impact of blogging on brands and reputations is an admirable call, Jarvis and others are questioning the validity of this group’s work, including The Consumerist in a post tonight.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Open Source Marketing, Reputation Management, PR

Back in October Budget launched the first entirely blog-based viral contest campaign, called Up Your Budget, where stickers were placed in 16 cities over the course of four weeks. Stickers found in the treasure hunt earned players $10,000. On top of $160K in prizes, $20,000 was paid for ads on 177 blogs. The contest is completed and Spunker.com reports the four-week drive generated over 1,000,000 clickthroughs and 19.9 million impressions on 125 different blogs. Very cool idea that generated great buzz and significant consumer involvement in a branded Budget program. The campaign was pulled together by B.L. Ochman, blogger strategist and author of the What’s Next blog.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Marketing

Bob Garfield, Ad Age Columnist, spoke last night at Ball State , proclaiming the end of media as we know it. Garfield ’s idea of a “chaos scenario,” presented earlier this year, says that the media as it exists is headed for extinction due to a fragmented audience and a significant loss of advertising dollars. He further notes that as advertisers look for new outlets to spend their money, small specialized operations will become the dominant forces in media. The Ball State Daily News covered his lecture and mentioned his book, under the same title. If a book is in the works, enter a controversial stance to prime the pump for sales. That said, looking at how web-based news, blogs and RSS have come to the forefront at such a rapid rate, it’s hard to say what media will look like, or whether it will even exist in its current form, in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, RSS, Media

Cyber Monday a myth? Random Culture and Fast Company’s blog comment on the myth and marketing of Cyber Monday, a creation of Shop.org to create some excitement beyond Black Friday.

Flash mobs makes a comeback on Black Friday. PFSK links to the blog documenting the “freaks” who turned Wal-Mart, and later Target, into a dance hall.

Million Dollar home page becoming just that. The creator, Alex Tew, sells advertising by the pixel. He divides a computer display screen in 10,000 squares selling advertising by the pixel at $1 per pixel (100 pixel minimum). Brand Autopsy highlights current results – $ $712,000+ in advertising and 600,000 to 700,000 hits per month.

Colleges promoting anti-social behavior. Dan Pink writes about a NY Times piece on the emergence, and significance, of video game majors at Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech.

Banned X-Box Ad Making the Rounds. Screenhead links to a recent Xbox 360 Ad, called entitled Stand Off, now circulating online.

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Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Public Relations, Contagious Media, Video Games, Flash Mobs, Marketing

Steve Rubel has a quicky on Nokia’s efforts to engage the blog community as part of its N90 launch in the US .  The site is intended to give bloggers core background and content needed to easily post on the product launch. The content available includes:

• A standard press release
• Links to positive posts
• Magazine reviews
• User experiences
• Podcasts
• Application reviews
• Media coverage for the site itself
• Direct questions to the blogger relations team

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Social Media, Public Relations

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, writes about how he primarily gets his news through a personal “editor,” consisting of approximately 150 blog feeds, versus reading mainstream media. The post is worth a look not only for the irony in his media habits, but also for his take on what magazines and content creators must do to stay relevant. Link from PSFK.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Media, Social Media

A number of stories and posts from the long weekend took a close look the media transformation in progress along with calls to action in the ad and PR community to get with the program or risk being left behind. A few places to check out include:

Jeff Jarvis comments on Bubble Generation’s overview of Media 2.0. If you can get past all the buzzwords in Bubble Generation’s post, you may better appreciate the implications of micro-media (blogs, podcasts) content services (mySpace, Flickr) and aggregation services (RSS) on information consumption (media, entertainment, advertising).

Business Week’s December 5^th profile of R/GA’s Bob Greenberg and his call for agencies to re-invent themselves from top to bottom. As he sees it, as bad as the current unraveling is for TV and newspapers, it’s potentially worse for ad agencies. He claims ad agencies have to be better conversant with information architecture, play in the world of personalized media, and create totally immersive brand experiences.

Steve Rubel’s post on his upcoming PR Week article calling for the PR industry to act in addressing new media trends. He says, and I very much agree, that we need to get in the game by mobilizing and training our people to work hands-on in this new world. No so much through more surveys or seminars, but showing our teams how to set up and read feeds, write posts and monitor blogs to better understand how to best counsel clients on traditional and non-traditional strategies.

Technorati Tags: Public Relations, advertising, media, blogs, social media, social marketing, media 2.0.

A new WSJ poll that says 62% of voters (read general public) do not read blogs and only 17% read more than five. This comes on the heels of another blog flare-up (read vocal public) that forced the hand of Sony to reverse course on copy-protected CD after weeks of scorn voiced online. While the WSJ data may lead execs to dismiss the need to take blogs seriously, there are serious repercussions if you choose to ignore them as Sony, Dell, Kryptonite can attest. Links from Brand Autopsy and What’s Next.

New York Times Sunday paper remains a must-read to stay up to date on all things media and culture. A sample of great articles today – all which showcase the force of social and technological advances:

In Sunday Styles: Warren St. Johns covers the curious rise of a personal favorite, Bill Simmons – AKA “The Sports Guy.” With no formal journalism training, and shunned from traditional newsrooms, Simmons created a site that today gets a half a million monthly readers and is described as something between a freewheeling blog and a traditional newspaper column.

In Business: Saul Hansell profiles that latest Shawn Fanning venture called Snocap – this one a peer-to-peer media space that functions like Napster, but willl allow music sellers to name their price for tunes shared on the network.

Also in Business: Randall Stross writes about Google’s impact in transforming web-based advertising. 

In Sports: Selena Roberts’ front page piece highlights the rise of Internet hit artists blogging about wrong-doings of college players, coaches and university officials.

Blogger Julia Langbein, is gaining a cult-like following in NY for making fun of weekly reviews from New York Times’ chief restaurant critic, Frank Bruni.  Another example of how MSM personalities and perspectives are being neutralized or flat out parodied by smart and entertaining voices.