Don’t Call It a Flog

If you talk to some of the old school mobile subscription services marketers, and by old school, we really mean those who ran campaigns before the Facebook Flyers program, they would let you in on a little secret. They would show you how they could both be compliant but still designed in a way to perform effectively. If you ask how, what it came down to was that sometimes the most obvious placement can also be the most easily overlooked and ignored by users. The beauty and the curse of being human is that we are trained to ignore certain elements that we have grown accustomed to. We’re like web browsers that cache images for quicker loading. Our brains do the same so that we have the bandwidth to process what changes in the environment not what remains static. For better and worse, the flogs have lost their novelty, which on the "better" side means users just don’t pay attention to the details. So, when a site adds a disclaimer at the top like, "Oprah and Dr. Oz have no association with this page and do not endorse "The Oprah Diet". MommysFatLoss.com is an affiliate marketer representing products available from "Acai Pure" and "Colon Cleanse Max" Acai & Colon Cleansing supplements," users will just block it out and look for the other message. The "for worse" relates to that and means that overall effectiveness has started to slip slightly and that public consciousness has started to look for the next thing. And so too has the performance marketing community.

For those who haven’t been surfing Hotmail religiously, here is one of the more prominent flogs in weightloss. This one ups the ante on amount lost. It mentions 147 in the Headline but only 47 in the About Me.

Here is another example, this one a more "classic" flog.

Both are good and doing phenomenally well. The top example especially is absolutely raking in the money due to what must be some leverage in their media buying. The number of placements is not something the average marketer, even a successful one, has access to. As good as these sites are, they are starting to show signs of age. They aren’t brands. They are gimmicks, and without telling a living breathing story, their snapshot in time starts to lose potency. They excel because of their ability to create a trust bridge to products that otherwise have no differentiation. That trust bridge is important. So the question is, what happens when the blog format tires and a new one is needed? I only wish I were clever enough to have thought of the latest iteration. Unlike the flogs who follow a WordPress-like look and feel, this new breed is completely different. It almost can’t be called a flog. You’ve probably seen them running or if you work at a network been forwarded it. Take a look at this one. Utter evil genius.

In all the ways to create a different but equally powerful trust bridge, what better than to mirror a news source. And check out the name. The Boston Tribune. What average person would really know Boston newspapers (outside of those in the New England Area). It’s like saying the Los Angeles Post. And, in more news site style, it has ads across the type (brilliantly all promoting the page), mutli-media support, all while leveraging the brand power of other experts.

Whatever this format can be considered (farticle?), it’s catching on. Here is another iteration but run under a different brand focusing on a different product. You’ll notice, it has a very similar layout and pitch but doesn’t use a news brand. It’s the same entity as the above based on the tracking and disclaimer language. This one isn’t so much a news site as more of an article. If anything it resembles a more traditional advertorial.

Another example in our cavalcade of new reality sites is News9News. It’s evil genius is less in the name and more the lovely array of images at top that suggest the news team behind the site. It even displays weather information, the IP mapping could be better. While the header suggests a more robust site, all links point to the product to get the user down the path of the trial. News9 has pretty strong disclaimer language below and a link to it above. We do enjoy the contact option, which reads, "Do you have an idea for a news story? Do you have an event that you would like us to share with the public? Would you like to advertise on our website? Contact us by sending an email to the address below. All inquiries will be fielded and directed to the appropriate party."

We’ve seen at least one of these reality sites running on Facebook and quite a few gaining some solid traction on display. Regardless of what happens, it’s amazing to see the iteration in the fake reality sites happening this quickly and in some ways dramatically. They are still fake people but being written in a way that is arguably less deceptive even though it’s entirely a work of fiction. I’m just waiting until we have one that isn’t The Boston Tribune but Oprah Times.