I have to say I'm a bit disappointed, Frank. I would have thought you might at least take a run at some of the issues people are talking about -- dismissing it as an echo chamber dustup sparked by a scoop is focusing on the trees, when there's a forest (or at least some underbrush) worthy of discussion, I think. I was hoping to get your perspective on it, but instead you've focused on the mechanics of what happened. Why bother writing about it at all?

So you don't see an issue of execution with this particular campaign then? You don't think that it backfired because it chose to use people whose integrity might be called into question for providing what amounts to advertorial?

I'm just curious what your take would be on the whole idea -- whether faking a conversation is a valid strategy, for example. In other words, I was hoping for some analysis of the play itself, rather than just a bunch of color commentary about who threw the pass or whether it was intercepted, etc.

Thanks, Frank. I would agree that it isn't dishonest in the same way that PayPerPost is, because there was disclosure. And it could be that this kind of campaign raises the same issues as any kind of advertorial, print or online. But I would argue that the dividing lines are even more blurred with entities like TechCrunch and GigaOm. What would people think if that campaign had included quotes from Walt Mossberg or David Pogue?

As for whether there are more important topics to be writing about, I have no doubt that there are. But that doesn't change the fact that campaigns such as this one raise questions about credibility and how we define it as it relates to online and new media, and those are pretty important issues, I think.

Is this campaign from Edelman PR’s Me2Revolution team?

Through McCann-Erickson Worldwide?

Frank, Allow me to repeat what I said in a comment in Om's post::

Neil Chase, Vice President of Federated Media Publishing trumpets the “birth of conversational marketing.” I like the idea of markets being conversations…very cluetrain and the right direction.

Here is his less than credible explanation of the MS campaign in question:

“In the case of this Microsoft campaign, the marketers asked if our writers would join a discussion around their “people ready” theme. Microsoft is an advertiser on our authors’ sites, but it’s paying them only based on the number of ad impressions delivered. There was no payment for joining the conversation and they were not required to do it. They’re not writing about this on their blogs, and of course several of them have been known to be pretty hard on Microsoft at times as reporters. They’re talking about the topic, and readers joined that conversation.”

Why would anyone join a conversation about what People Ready means to me? Is this a conversation worth having? I don’t think so unless you want to have fun critiquing Microsoft’s ad slogan...or to participate in promoting Microsoft's ad campaign

DF