Fictional character written blogs are not “fake blogs” |
I have one fictional character written blog. And no, it’s not this one, and no it’s not linked now nor has it ever been here — at least as far as I remember. I don’t update it much so far, because I have to get in a certain mood to write under the character. Hey, It’s a writing thing. If you count my name ChefTD from Webmaster Cookbook as a fictional character, then make it two, however, that isn’t the blog I’m talking about.
Fictional character blogs to me offer a challenging creative outlet, ability and exercise to move outside the framework placed around ourselves online as real people. Should a business owner blog under a fictional character? Maybe for some it’s the only way to get a blog online.
Some people are very shy and they may not want to write under their name. Writers use pen names not only to protect their identities but sometimes to get out of being typed by fans for a certain type of work. They want to explore and build upon their versatility. But if under another name the writer becomes popular than all that old work under different pen names can come out under the other name as new content. It’s a marketing move and it’s sort of the quiet, acceptable deception in the publishing industry.
Now take Gourmet Station:
Delicious Destinations is written by T. Alexander, “a fictitious character created by GourmetStation, it’s creative partner, Blue Marble Media, and marketing partner, Bloomberg Marketing. T. A. is our icon, who through reflections about food, customs and travel, adds a bit of spice to our website and newsletters.”
Some people are taking exception to fictional character blogs like the one by T. Alexander, but I think this kind of thing is pretty cool and clever. No, I don’t care much for the subject matter, so I’m not subscribing, but if I was interested in gourmet food, I wouldn’t be disturbed by the fact the blog is written by a fictitious character.
Steve Rubel labels the gourmet station blog “another fake blog” which I think is wrong. Since Rubel is also in the PR business and Toby Bloomberg is a competitor it doesn’t surprise me that he seemed to subtly put a negative spin on this with the power of one simple word.
Words can be so powerful. Maybe Rubel’s intentions weren’t to fart on the effort, but it sure has a pungent scent this side of the ’sphere.
To me, a truly “fake” blog would be a spam blog. A blog created without any soul or human purpose whatsoever except to sell somebody something. Unfortunately I’ve seen a few spam blogs like this that are nothing but keyword-driven drivel in blog format. Now that’s a fake blog to me. That’s the type of blog that deserves as much condemnation as fellow bloggers and PR people can muster. Those type of sites should find their own private purgatory where every search engine spider on the planet scurries away from them. In my dreams.
However, the question of whether a fictional character can dispense real world advice and/or provide value to a business/organization is a fair question. Look at Ask Jeeves. The Geico Gecko. There are fictional characters all over the place that dispense advice or are mascots with ‘tude. (BTW, the butler’s searches are are of little value to me, though, but I’m hopeful that Ask.com can get it together but it’s been awfully quiet in the butler’s den since the Bloglines acquistion and the sale).
Frankly, I’d rather read an interesting, useful and/or entertaining blog from a clearly identified fictional character than a boring cat/dog/life blog from a real person. A fictional character isn’t a problem in and of itself.
Maybe it’s even a good solution for some folks.
Update 4/6/2005: Travis stops by to comment, disagree, and add a link to author Susannah Gardner’s opinion on the matter: Deliciously fake. Links inside the comment area get that awful rel=’nofollow’ (I need to fix that one of these days). Only the link in your signature actually has the rel=’nofollow’ stripped out.
Did this post make you go hmm?
(Hmm, no ratings yet)
Loading ...Related Posts
- Huffington apology for gaffe makes CNN
- Fred Scoblestone and Barney Rubel: “Yabba dabba don’t!”
- Geico radio ad talks about blogging
- Days of Chris and Ponzi’s Real or Fake Lives?
- Fake tree making its last stand
- Business blogging not for every business
The thing about Jeeves and the Gecko and Manolo are that those characters are immediately and obviously made-up.
As Susannah said at Buzz Marketing with Blogs, The thing about the “Gourmet Station” persona, “T. Alexander,” is that he seems to be a perfectly ordinary person. I think many people will come to the site and not realize that he’s a construct, and that means they’re going to believe something that’s not true, like this phrase:
By way of comparison: Spinal Tap is a wonderful fake documentary. But if the Discovery Channel hosts a documentary about lions in Africa, you want them to actually go to Africa, and if that documentary turns out to have staged, fake portions, you’re going to be disappointed.
If people feel unhappy with the T. Alexander blog, that’s going to rub off on the company, and on blogging in general. There’s no absolute black and white line, but my gut reaction is that, frankly, they ought to go find someone who actually has a travel and food background to write the blog.
Comment by Travis Smith — April 6, 2005 @ 6:47 am PST
Hi Travis - thanks for taking time to comment, you certainly have some well-reasoned points. It’s seems to be your position, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that any sort of deception in advertising, company-sponsored newsletter, literature, etc, even in the name of entertainment, is wrong. Am I understanding this correctly?
Magicians are another area of deception. They are real magicians, real people, but they aren’t sawing anybody in half. The people in the audience are being deceived. It’s an illusion. Their ads say they are going to perform all sorts of crazy illusions. The audience believes these are really happening — or at least suspends their belief in order for the illusion to work.
I disagree with your last paragraph (”if people feel unhappy with the T. Alexander blog that’s going to rub off on the company and on blogging in general”) because:
1) that requires the opinion and feedback of their customers which neither of us actually have
2) if the majority of the people on the street opinion of blogging in general is so fragile that the actions of one blogger taint all the bloggers than we’re all screwed. There are some really, really fake blogs out there like I mentined in the piece above that should be first in line for drawing contempt and scorn. If what Gourmet Station is doing is wrong, then it’s way toward the back of the line.
3) I bet if their customers were actually polled — and maybe they should be — asking them whether they cared or not if their blogger was a fictitious persona with worldly gourmet food experience the vast majority of them would say: “no” or “I don’t care.”
People love to be entertained, Travis
Why do casinos make so much money when everybody walking in the door knows the odds are stacked against them. The house statistically has the best odds. Still, people need and want to be entertained.
One of the first things I think people new to blogs naturally want to do is look at who’s writing the blog — the all important About The Author section — as I did, when I first visited the Gourmet Station blog. And the very first sentence identifies T. Alexander as fiction. If this bio was also fake — as was the case in Richard Bachman vs. Stephen King — then what would some people who don’t like this be saying?
You see, just as you take exception to this, I’m looking at this completely the opposite way and applauding the creativity of this company and marketing firm. We don’t really know for a fact — not me, you, Susannah, Steve Rubel, Toby Bloomberg or anybody else — what Gourmet Station’s customers truly think about this. An experiment. A risk.
Business is all about taking risks, Travis. Not huge risks, and perhaps in some people’s eyes this risk is too great, but I believe the majority of people will see it as creative and not dishonest or unethical.
People were thoroughly deceived with the Bachman books. That is, all but a few who carefully noted the clues in one of the early first printing copyright notices (I believe that’s how the tale goes). Very few Stephen King readers labeled King a fraud or fake and stopped reading because of his nom de plume. Instead, King gained from the ruse a new group of fans and increased his following.
Aren’t I being a little deceived by the price of buying something gourmet as it is? ‘Gourmet’ chocolates just because they are made in France by hand from somebody supposedly famous makes it gourmet? (Just my fictitious example, I really don’t know much about gourmet food).
Deception to me would be saying: this chocolate is gourmet when in fact they were buying it in bulk from the local grocery store.
Comment by TDavid — April 6, 2005 @ 8:14 am PST
Actually, that’s not my position. Deception that is unclear and ambiguous is wrong. Deception that is obvious is OK. For example, a car commercial of a car flying is OK. But a car commercial that lets people think that the car actually has a flight option, when really it doesn’t, is not OK, and the FTC agrees that deception of that sort is wrong, too.
People go to a magician expecting to be deceived. They read a novel knowing the story’s made up.
If the salesman at the car dealership fooled me with an illusion I’d be upset in a way that I wouldn’t be if a magician fooled me during a performance. And if I bought a book in the Non-Fiction section that turned out to be false, I’d also be cross. And, to use your casino example, an awful lot of effort goes into making sure that casinos are not cheating — that the odds of winning are in fact exactly what the client thinks they are. A casino that had a “fake” blackjack game that was more unfair than a true blackjack game would be put out of business immediately.
The general point I’m trying to make, is that if people are expecting to be fooled or entertained, that’s fine. If there’s a likelihood of misunderstanding the nature of the information provided, that’s not fine.
Comment by Travis Smith — April 6, 2005 @ 3:29 pm PST
I agree that deception that is unclear and ambiguous is wrong, but I disagree that in this case it’s either of those two things, Travis. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one because it’s a subjective determination.
Another thought occured to me that why couldn’t they produce two blogs, with a single blog dedicated to T. Alexander and another dedicated to the real people behind the company? Perhaps the T. Alexander one would be updated more often, but the business blog could be used for posting specials and other deals they were running and other business to consumer communication. T. Alexander could be the newsletter online content for those who were looking for that type of commentary. Perhaps this would assuage the whole “it’s deceptive” crowd, too.
I’m sure that Toby’s watching this and other threads elsewhere on the topic and she’s weighing all information — pros and cons.
One thing is certain, no matter which way one goes with this, this business has received more FREE publicity over all this than they ever would have gotten by just starting a vanilla flavored business blog (I wouldn’t have linked to that type of blog here and/or spent the digital ink). They have to be happy about this aspect of things, even if they encountered some criticism along the way.
Comment by TDavid — April 6, 2005 @ 4:40 pm PST
TDavid - thanks for your support and very interesting ideas. And Travis thanks for adding to the discussion in a kind and professional manner. Conversations and debates are how we’re going to grow and learn. I appreciate the exchanges.
Comment by Toby — April 6, 2005 @ 11:23 pm PST
I have a fictional blog too. I use it mostly for expressing ideas and thoughts I have about my friends/loved ones anonymously. I mix characteristics of people I know (both bad and good) and make the characters react with them as a sort of comment on their behavior. This way they can’t get mad at me because sometimes one character can be made up of 5 different parts of people I know! Its fun too as I don’t have to stick with a particular mood. I can be dark without being depressed and happy without being actually happy. Its loads of fun! Click on my name for the blog.
Comment by Rishi Sharma — April 19, 2005 @ 9:18 pm PST
What’s wrong with character blogs?
I find my self disagreeing with the
Trackback by seattleduck — May 10, 2005 @ 12:11 pm PST
[…] I wonder what my buddy Toby over at the Diva Marketing blog thinks? She was involved in a scrap over a character blog being mislabeled as ‘fake’. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Geico radio ad talks about blogging — March 29, 2006 @ 2:23 pm PST