This is about trading money for press coverage. That’s becoming the new meaning of Trade Press. It’s about enlisting The Ben Franklin PR firm, in voluminous quantity, on behalf of glowing visibility. Ya, OK, I’m hot tonight. I’ll calm down. But here’s the story:
Over the past two consecutive days I have been in two separate client meetings, in two different cities, in which our corporate contact was talking excitedly about — or a trade media publication sales rep was making a provocative presentation about — paid editorial. That’s as in, you know, literally, “give me $18,000 and our editorial staff will author a white paper on your behalf that I guarantee you’ll love, love, love.” I won’t name the clients, the publications or the cities. OK, city wise I must have been in Sodom on Tuesday and Gomorrah today.
It’s not the client’s fault any more than it is the adolescents fault on the playground when some wheeler dealer offers them a similar escape. Of course, the dealer in this instance, like the dealer at the school, never mentions the side effects of this alluring, easy end to anonymity, as in everyone knows it is a paid endorsement; everyone knows you bought their love; everyone knows there isn’t anything really credible in the piece.
The only difference between this (the world’s second oldest profession, as they say) and the world’s oldest profession is that these folks in the trade media will actually kiss you on the lips, too. In fact, they’ll shine your shoes, wash your car, clean your house and just about anything else to sustain their business model and the revenue stream. What is not so apparent is how overt or opaque they plan to be letting their “subscribers” and “pass along readership” know that money exchanged hands in return for the glowing feature.
