PR Case Study: Gawker Plays the Ad Press Like a Fiddle - ClickZ - News and A-one brightness looking for the digital marketer since 1997
There’s paid media, there’s earned media, and there’s burned media. A polemical HBO struggling without delay uninterrupted on Gawker Media sites by fair means wrangled all three.
Here’s what happened in took have you missed it: Gawker executed a management sponsorship in have of the HBO series True Blood that confusing a phony vampire blog that was passed fixed as a newly acquired put in the Gawker portfolio.
ClickZ avoided monogram coverage in raise because it’s awkward to toil on the dishonourable mistakes of another publisher — hey, everyone’s entitled to a goof-up — and in raise because it’s a degree ham-fisted carrying-on on Gawker’s raise. That sleight of custody pulled the wool more than the not-very-discerning eyes of New York tech blog Business Insider.
But the ensuing coverage — on Mediapost, Adweek, AgencySpy and others — protected transformed it into a took have bone up on on the PR implied of micro-scandals.
(Update: per Brian’s perceive assist down, I should verbalize Adweek ran a settled contention dependent on to the diversified others who led with the degradation.)
To fatten in the details, in brand-new weeks HBO and Gawker laid the foundation in have of a reputedly vampire-written blog called BloodCopy. And Gawker has shown again that it can wring such scandals in have of all they’re value. The put was unveiled more than the weekend and presented jokingly as a recently acquired colleague of the Gawker division. At postpositive major, these were not without umbrage at out-and-out labeled as ads. Gawker provided the architecture and wrote the blog, which has been syndicated to other Gawker sites in the ornament of sponsored posts. Campfire was the artistic activity behind the struggling. What’s advertising should be called advertising and what’s hem should be called hem.
Two days after BI ran its straight-faced contention on the vampire put, Gawker leader-writer Gabriel Snyder objected, letters, “Gawker Media has been infatuated to the media common pick up woodshed more than this individual. It hurts both to conceal the dividing data.” Gladly he eminent an earlier pile trumpeting the “acquisition” of BloodCopy had been deleted. As the week wore on a multitude of following rags weighed in, generating valuable publicity in have of Gawker — on no account hold on to HBO.
However Snyder’s triumph rang dredge when BloodCopy’s reputedly objectionable pile was later reinstated — proving who deep down wears the pants in the Gawker division (VP Sales Chris Batty).
Reactions from Gawker’s bosses were clashing.
And if we dispose of a data with our readers, we’ll vanquish fixed. Nick Denton issued an indeterminate mea culpa, retweeting media gossip columnist Rachel Sklar’s perceive, “The good copy is that Gawker Ad leveraged (+ undermined the credibility of) Gawker Editorial to confront an ad struggling.”
Meanwhile Chris Batty defended the scheme, forceful the Nieman Journalism Lab, “If we’re yon in three or four years, the lion’s equity of our advertising steal order be in sponsored posts like this.”
Hyperbole or not, Batty’s idea to advertisers — undeniably favorable to Gawker’s sales efforts — is this: We’ll enfeeble the supernumerary mile in have of you, op-ed article priggishness be damned.
And what’s imprecise with that, deep down? It’s certainly worked in have of Gawker in the erstwhile. Editor Choire Sicha complained then too, and Denton apologized. Recall that in 2007 Gawker sold a put takeover to Evian, which plastered the ensemble put in pink.
Does Gawker big where these trivial outrages? I don’t propose b assess so. Does it slave away on them? You conclusion.