Hamilton Nolan of Gawker told a story yesterday that will both entertain and enrage you; it sure did me.
It began when Hamilton received an email from a wanna-be marketing group called 43a. The agency claims they regularly bribe bloggers to “semi-naturally” include links to their “clients” and offered to pay Hamilton $175 for each link.
Clearly, this guy Bryan Clark of 43a has never read a single blog post ever written by Hamilton or he’d know that he’s the last blogger on earth who would ever accept a bribe for client coverage. Had Bryan read Hamilton’s previous work, he would also have known why Hamilton was so inquisitive about how it works, what they pay, which other bloggers have participated, what clients 43a represents and how the “marketing” agency gets around editors and their nit-picky standards of journalistic integrity.
Rather than paraphrase Hamilton, I suggest, you click on over and read through the stunning email exchanges he had with Bryan. It will truly blow your mind.
I would like to point out, that all of the bloggers Bryan claims to have bribed have adamantly denied the allegation. And, the “clients” 43a claims to represent, T-Mobile, Motorola and Dell, have all also denied ever working with, paying money to or even knowing this agency. In fact, Adam Brown of Dell is a friend of mine everyone knows he would never in a million years work with any agency that bribes bloggers. Adam is a stand-up guy if ever there was one and quite frankly, he is far too talented to even need to bribe a blogger.)
I am truly enraged by this story because this kind of garbage just sullies our profession. The good news is lousy marketing and PR practices always get called out. 43a tried to play with with the big boys and got burned as bloggers everywhere are sharing Hamilton’s email exchange.\
credit: Hamilton Nolan of Gawker