Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan?
Valleywag is taking Mike Arrington, Om Malik, and John Battelle to task for allegedly doing a Federated Media version of “pay to post”.
John Battelle's ad network has roped in some of its star writers to an ad campaign on behalf of Microsoft's "people-ready" catchphrase. In the ads, and the companion site built by Federated Media, Michael Arrington explains how his Techcrunch site became "people-ready". "When is a business people ready?" asks Gigaom's Om Malik. "The minute you decide to strike out on your own..." Other writers who've been paid to repeat Microsoft's slogan include Paul Kedrosky and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat, as well as Fred Wilson, the blogger-investor.
Om Malik response: I have requested Federated Media, our sales partners, suspend the campaign on our network of sites, and they have. We are turning off any such campaigns that might be running on our network. Would I participate in a similar campaign again? Nothing is worth gambling the readers’ trust. Conversational marketing is a developing format, and clearly the rules are not fully defined. If the readers feel a line was crossed, I’ll will defer to their better judgement.
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