WOMMA Ethics Code Review

For those of you willing to lend your voice, perspective and insights to WOMMA's Ethics Code, you should know that a review of that Code is currently underway.  Given the speed with which social media is changing the media and marketing landscape, we want to make sure the WOMMA Code remains dynamic and valuable for all word-of-mouth constituents.  WOMMA VP Paul Rand is doing a great job of moderating the discussion.

I've already provided a comment (also copied below this post) and encouraged WOMMA to promote the power of a Disclosure Policy framework in the Code to maximize transparency across a wide range of sites and practices.  Just as Privacy Policies were a self-regulating industry collaboration to educate visitors about a site's personal data collection and privacy practices, Disclosure Policies are a natural industry collaboration to educate visitors about a site's conflicts and disclosure practices.  I can't think of any good reasons why Disclosure Policies linked from every page of a site, at a minimum, wouldn't be a great move for the industry and consumers.

If you agree...or disagree...head on over to WOMMA and join the discussion.

The WOMMA Summit live session on this topic is included below.  Although the participants are pretty comfortable with sponsored blogging, transparency and disclosure is the key.

My comment is currently in moderation and included below -- any thoughts?

"I’ll start with the observation that the closest analogy to bloggers is radio hosts — particularly talk radio hosts. As blogs often include podcasts, this analogy becomes even more obvious. Radio hosts, even of the smallest, niche programs with less than 100 listeners regularly review and promote products and services for their audience, and are compensated for doing so. Given the maturity of the radio industry, I believe WOMMA could benefit from studying marketing requirements for that medium. I’d guess some of WOMMA’s member companies include radio marketing experts and should be included in ethics code discussions — especially since their WOM efforts via online, offline and radio are subject to the WOMMA code.

I watched the live ethics session (thanks for recording), prompting the following thoughts/comments:
1) Although this question was presented to the audience multiple times, in multiple ways, most audience speakers appeared comfortable with the marketing approach so long as Honesty ROI is followed.
2) If something would be OK for a paid employee to do, it’s not clear why a contractor (e.g. blogger) would not be allowed to do it — assuming Honesty ROI is followed by employee or contractor.
3) It’s not clear where the cash versus product distinction came from in this question and why it makes a difference. If a product is given to a blogger, economic value is clearly given — the value of the product. If a product is given as a loaner, economic value is still given — the value of renting such a product for the loaner period.
4) The core question comes back to Honesty ROI and disclosure applies to free products, free services, cash, gift cards, free passes, contests and even AFFILIATE COMPENSATION. If any WOMMA code tweaks happen around this topic, it could be making it clear that all of these practices involve an element of compensation and, thus, all should include disclosure consistent with the Honesty ROI.
5) Although type of disclosure may differ with different types of compensation and publications (e.g. many local magazines are 100% sponsored without stating such on every page), zero disclosure isn’t an option under Honesty ROI. As a minimum, a Disclosure Policy linked ubiquitously sitewide could provide visitors a standard place to look for the practices of the site they visit — very similar to how Privacy Policy links provide visitors a standard place to look for the privacy practices of the site they visit. In fact, a Disclosure Policy linked sitewide could be a good baseline requirement for any blogger engaged by a WOMMA member. If the sitewide Privacy Policy framework is good enough to protect our credit cards, SSN and identity, an industry-backed Disclosure Policy framework could be valuable for protecting readers/viewers of WOM efforts — and promote self-regulation.

Thanks for the moderation work Paul. This is a topic I’ve spent considerable time researching and I’d welcome discussing any of these ideas — my email was provided with this comment."