Learning A Valuable Lesson From TiVo’s Pay Per Post Experience

TiVo's (TIVO) latest hook up with Pay Per Post is beginning to look less like a relationship and more like a one night stand, after the company responded to criticism of the program, by asking “postees” to pull the TiVo ads off of YouTube.

In fairness to TiVo, there is evidence to suggest, that they had intended these ads to carry a sponsored-by-TiVo disclaimer, but due to quality control issues at Pay Per Post, the ads were leaked without the proper disclaimers.

Even though I think that TiVo made a mistake by partnering with Pay Per Post to begin with, killing the campaign was the right antidote for dealing with this poison in our community. There will always be times when companies make mistakes, but it’s how they react to those mistakes that define who they are and in this case, TiVo made the right move by deleting the campaign.

By moving quickly to kill the campaign, TiVo demonstrated that they are willing to listen to their community and take action, even when they’ve misjudged the rules that their community plays by. In the long run, this won’t represent more than a five second skip back in the history of TiVo, but I do think that other companies can learn a valuable lesson from TiVo’s experience.

User generated content is sexy and it’s tempting to try and manufacture buzz, but sooner or later, your customers will find out that you are gaming the system and they will attack. Steve Rubel said it best, when he recomended that marketers be careful about trying to manipulate the social web.

“Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and other collaborative news sites are like Bengal Tigers. They’re beautiful to look at and admire, but they’re very dangerous to touch. If your stories end up landing on these sites, then terrific. Be happy. Include the metrics in your coverage reports. But seeding PR links is trouble waiting to happen, especially as these communities become barraged with spam and the users’ sensitivity meter goes to code red.”

If your brand has no value, then there may be no place to go but up, but if you think that there is any equity in your brand, then smart marketers will think twice before supporting this tumor on the world wide web.

Even if there were an upside to astroturfing YouTube with fake ads, this controversy alone should make companies rethink their support for the Pay Per Post brand. If by partnering with the company you end up damaging the reputation of your brand, then what have you really gained by paying people to create fake testimonials?

If I was an ad exec and my marketing consultant suggested Pay Per Post to me, I would fire him and find a marketing firm that has better ethics and an understanding of what it really takes to build grassroots support. Instead of uploading fake ads to YouTube, TiVo would have been better off having someone search YouTube, LiveJournal, Blogspot and MySpace for real TiVo testimonials and then leave comments thanking them for the support.

There are lots of times when I make suggestions for TiVo and while not everyone of them is a great idea, I can tell you that I would freak out if someone who worked for TiVo left me a comment validating an idea and promising to consider it as a future development. Even if TiVo never implemented my idea, knowing that someone from the company took the time to consider it would be exciting enough. This isn’t astroturfing, this is interacting and responding to your customers.

Fake ads will always run the risk of blowing up on you, but by being open and transparent with your fan base, it’s not that hard to turn happy customers into viral customers. Instead of supporting companies like Pay Per Post, businesses should instead be thinking about how to engage their existing fans.

While you may or may not agree that the ethics behind Pay Per Post are deplorable, it’s clear that the company is a lightning rod for criticism. Whether or not that criticism is fair should be irrelevant to marketers. There are some who believe that even bad publicity is good publicity, but I don’t think that anyone wants to see their brand dragged through the social mud. It’s exciting to see grassroots support for your products, but if you are going get into the same cage as the tigers, then you shouldn’t be surprised when they turn on you and attack. If some PR hack recommends Pay Per Post as a way to build buzz, do yourself a favor and go hire someone who knows what they are talking about.