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May 28, 2009

PR Case Study: Gawker Plays the Ad Press Like a Fiddle

There's paid media, there's earned media, and there's burned media. A controversial HBO campaign now running on Gawker Media sites somehow wrangled all three.

Here's what happened in case you missed it: Gawker executed a custom sponsorship for the HBO series True Blood that involved a phony vampire blog that was passed off as a newly acquired site in the Gawker portfolio. That sleight of hand pulled the wool over the not-very-discerning eyes of New York tech blog Business Insider. ClickZ avoided initial coverage in part because it's unseemly to dwell on the embarrassing mistakes of another publisher -- hey, everyone's entitled to a mistake -- and in part because it's a somewhat ham-fisted execution on Gawker's part.

But the ensuing coverage -- by Mediapost, Adweek, AgencySpy and others -- have transformed it into a case study on the PR potential of micro-scandals. And Gawker has shown repeatedly that it can milk such scandals for all they're worth. (Update: per Brian's comment below, I should say Adweek ran a straight story relative to the many others who led with the scandal.)

To fill in the details, in recent weeks HBO and Gawker laid the groundwork for a supposedly vampire-written blog called BloodCopy. The site was unveiled over the weekend and presented jokingly as a recently acquired member of the Gawker family. Gawker provided the architecture and wrote the blog, which has been syndicated to other Gawker sites in the form of sponsored posts. At first, these were not always clearly labeled as ads. Campfire was the creative agency behind the campaign.

Two days after BI ran its straight-faced story on the vampire site, Gawker editor Gabriel Snyder objected, writing, "Gawker Media has been taken to the media criticism woodshed over this one. What's advertising should be called advertising and what's edit should be called edit. It hurts both to blur the distinction." Gladly he noted an earlier post trumpeting the "acquisition" of BloodCopy had been deleted.

However Snyder's victory rang hollow when BloodCopy's supposedly objectionable post was later reinstated -- proving who really wears the pants in the Gawker family (VP Sales Chris Batty). As the week wore on a number of trade rags weighed in, generating valuable publicity for Gawker -- never mind HBO.

Reactions from Gawker's management were mixed. Nick Denton issued an ambiguous mea culpa, retweeting media writer Rachel Sklar's comment, "The news is that Gawker Ad leveraged (+ undermined the credibility of) Gawker Editorial to promote an ad campaign."

Meanwhile Chris Batty defended the strategy, telling the Nieman Journalism Lab, "If we're around in three or four years, the majority of our advertising revenue will be in sponsored posts like this."

Hyperbole or not, Batty's message to advertisers -- undeniably favorable to Gawker's sales efforts -- is this: We'll go the extra mile for you, editorial priggishness be damned. And if we cross a line with our readers, we'll back off.

And what's wrong with that, really? It's certainly worked for Gawker in the past. Recall that in 2007 Gawker sold a site takeover to Evian, which plastered the whole site in pink. Editor Choire Sicha complained then too, and Denton apologized.

Does Gawker engineer these little outrages? I don't think so. Does it cultivate them? You decide.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at May 28, 2009 10:31 AM

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Comments

Nice post. I can't agree Adweek covered this the same as Business Insider and Agency Spy. Their take, you're right, was about some kind of journalism scandal. My story was really about how publishers are bringing new programs to the table beyond typical ad buys in order to capture attention. The "micro scandal" didn't figure into the headline or the lead. It's described in graf 11.

Brian Morrissey May 28, 2009 12:00 PM

Hey Brian. I agree that you took a very different tack and shouldn't be lumped with the writers who led with the scandal. Making a small edit above to spell that out

Zach Rodgers May 28, 2009 12:15 PM

This is all very interesting, but what i wanna know is where can i pick up this synthetic blood drink everyone's talking about - ? Does it come in Type AB negative?

kate kaye May 28, 2009 3:37 PM

Zach, you and Brian both did a great job on this (Just to add my two cents, I contacted Nick Denton Saturday morning after I started seeing the news of Bloodcopy, and was referred eventually referred to his tweet that afternoon: "branded entertainment Web site tries to pass itself off as being real, ie Gawker... Read More: http://is.gd/CI6z" essentially making it sound like Gawker had absolutely nothing to do with it.)

Incidentally, Kate, the party is on Gawker's roof at 8:30 (though maybe indoors, since the weather out there isn't fit for a vampire). I'll email you the details.

David Kaplan May 28, 2009 3:58 PM

Hi Zach -

Great story. I think to call this a "PR case study" may be going a little far though. Maybe none of us will ever know just how deliberate this was (from a PR perspective) however it was very deliberate from an ad perspective.

The thing about Denton and PR is that:

a) He rarely speaks, so when he does, people listen.
b) When he does speak, he gives provocative commentary. (Remember the recent "sky is falling" rant in regards to ad revenue, and now Gawker Media's ads are up 30%?

Also it should be pointed out that the campaign was executed by Campfire - much more of a digital marketing firm than a PR firm - and much less likely to think about the potential PR issues around a campaign like this.

Joe

Joe Ciarallo May 28, 2009 5:18 PM

Thanks Joe. I agree with you that Campfire & Gawker weren't trying to pick up scandalous PR for True Blood. However I'm pretty sure Gawker sees all the writeups in the ad trades as a good thing for its sales efforts. How many ad buyers are now aware of its sponsored blog opportunities?

Zach Rodgers May 28, 2009 6:26 PM

Thanks Joe,

I like your interesting post about PR.

Walk In Clinic February 2, 2010 9:06 AM

May 28, 2009

PR Case Study: Gawker Plays the Ad Press Like a Fiddle

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