Product Placement

Beginning today, bloggers, Twitterers, and others who write online reviews or endorse products using new media must disclose it when they receive free merchandise or payment for writing about an item. The guidelines update the FTC’s 1980 guide addressing the use of testimonials in advertising, remapping marketing rules for the digital realm, where it’s hard to know if the exclamatory musings of fashion hounds and best-disposable-diaper posts by suburban moms are inspired by a great product or a free product. (from Boston Globe article by Joan Anderman)

Wow!  Really?  On one hand that is beyond irritating – get your hands out of the blogs – and on the other hand it’s like forced honesty.  Hopefully bloggers are honest in the first place. Isn’t honest writing the point of writing online? I guess it isn’t always. But readers can smell authenticity.  Can’t they?  I know I only talk about things that I personally use and love.  The FTC is not targeting bloggers like myself though I’d love to get products for free too!  I’d love a lifetime supply of Instead Softcup please!  That product is genius.  I’d also like a lifetime supply of  Prometheus Springs Lychee-Wasabi is my favorite one (that’s the green one). Even when we were doing Stirring Up Trouble (which is coming back btw), everything I talk about, cook with, eat, ingest, suggest that you ingest are things that I personally use, love and want to tell you about because it’s something great like Bragg’s Liquid Aminos LIQUID AMINOS. I love that stuff and cook with it all the time.  The spray one is great too.

Joan writes: Last year Procter & Gamble wooed 15 influential so-called mommy bloggers – who routinely receive shipments of free product samples from plush toys to strollers – with an all-expenses-paid trip to corporate headquarters, where executives solicited their feedback and touted the company’s charitable efforts, according to a blogger who posts at lilsugar.com. Similarly, publicists regularly deliver pricey cosmetics, skin-care products, clothing, and accessories to fashion bloggers in the hopes of generating online hype.

I get sent books about child abuse, torture and rape.  That’s no pricey skincare!  Palmolive Family Bath Bar, Classic Scent is the best facial bar I’ve ever used anyway and you can get it at the 99 Cent store.  Oh look at my pretty skin for 99c.  I do like being sent packages though, especially the books and movies about healing. That’s one of the myriad of reasons why I started the Survivor Manual. My favorite packages to get are puppets – just got some new ones today thank you Jackie!  The packages I get are from those who actually follow me, like what I have to say and show their support by sending me props, gifts and sometimes food!  It’s my birthday this weekend you know and I was thinking, what if the world really went nuts (it just may get worse), I’d sure like cans of food, bags of beans and rice, flashlights, tents, sleeping bags, dog food, and anything else you store up for surviving a zombie attack.  Hopefully we’ll still have wireless so I can post videos about how to trap and/or divert zombies.

Oh and while we’re talking about honest blogging and product placement, may I please have all the the things I love already:

* A Scion because I’m tall (36 inseam) and I like to dance while I drive and it’s hard to do that in my car.
* Please please can I please have some trapeze rigging?  Come on! My back doesn’t hurt anymore. I promise I’ll shoot videos.
* Flat screen TV so I can see Dexter better.
* A digital HD video camera that has a hard drive and no tape – go green.  I’ll shoot more.
* A digital camera. I’ll take more pictures.
* A Macbook Pro -  so I can play with them like Tori Amos plays piano, one in the front, one in the back.

Oh, and I dream of hosting Saturday Night Live one day too.  Or you can just tweet me.