The Adnostic

Sometimes your best ad isn't an ad and your best advocates are always satisfied customers, not shills.

Take Royal Caribbean for example. They monitored message boards and blogs and found their biggest advocates. Good. They invited these advocates to private parties and gave them a free cruise on their new ship. Good. Then they proceeded to expect the advocates to continue to plug the brand in public forums in exchange for further free services from Royal Caribbean without disclosing the relationship. Bad.

I'm all for treating your advocates well and thanking them for being fans of your brand, but be transparent about it and ask them to do the same. I'm also in favor of giving people with well known and relevant blogs the opportunity to try your services and review them, but it shouldn't be with any expectation of quid pro quo. Make sure the bloggers and reporters you deal with have a sense of integrity and aren't just in it for the freebies.

Now let's take Southwest Airlines. SWA has always been known for being casual and non-traditional. They think outside the box when it comes to customer service, which is always a good thing. Their flight attendants throw in a joke or two into the safety speech just to make sure you're listening, and some of them even rap:

Considering how miserable air travel has been lately, an airline where I can look forward to some fun and mischief is a good thing.

So what's better? A bunch of positive reviews by people who were basically paid to do so, or a YouTube video of a rapping flight attendant? Which says more about what that company is really about? Which gives the warm fuzzies? Which cost next to nothing? The one with sincerity.