For any company considering blogs as marketing vehicles, a good look at the up and downs via the WSJ. Using Adidas and NBA star Gilbert Arenas as a case study, the article shows both the risks and rewards, not just of using a celebrity endorser (those risks are well understood, hello Michael Vick), but also of using a celebrity endorser who has access to a blog, even if they phone it in. The two key grafs:
"I'm sitting there looking at the shoe like 'I hope you guys aren't serious. Because I'm not going to wear this shoe. ... Nobody is going to wear this shoe," said the blog post from the Washington Wizards guard. He said parts of it reminded him of a "ballerina."
Adidas executives learned that day what an increasing number of marketers have found -- that pitchmen armed with a blog can be tricky. Blog posts are typically candid and breezy, not the kind of safe, stock answers that athletes are often advised to give in postgame interviews, says David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute in Los Angeles. Blogs "can either help elevate the status of the companies or it can wreak havoc on the brands they work with," he says.
Then later:
These incidents have given Mr. Arenas's marketing partners pause; they say they realize they can't control what he says and that he might criticize them. Jordan Edelstein, marketing director at EA Sports, says the company debated Mr. Arenas's blogging style before the company chose him for the cover of the game.
"We knew if there was something he didn't like, he would say so -- probably to everyone," Mr. Edelstein says. Ultimately the company decided that Mr. Arenas's honesty was a plus: "That's why his fans respond to him. ... We felt it was worth the risk."
Anything that has risk associated with it needs to be measured against the potential upside. Risk, on its own, is not a good thing. It has to be associated with a reward. Even now, well into the age where blogging is an established medium, there are risks involved -- but as EA notes, they felt it was worth the risk.
Smart move.