Choosing Clients – How Do We Stay True To Ourselves?

Oct 7, 2010 by

There’s never a dull moment in the blogopshere, and especially the mom blogosphere.  This week’s controversy comes to you primarily courtesy of MomCentral, who took on client the Corn Refiner’s Association (CRA) to help get the word out that high fructose corn syrup (HCFS) is not any worse for you than sugar.  MomCentral enlisted a number of mom (and dad) bloggers to help promote this idea via a blog tour, kicked off with a webinar with the CRA people; bloggers were rewarded with gift cards for their time on the webinar and their posts.  Not surprisingly, more than a few people have had an issue with the way that this was handled, and some have even complained that MomCentral took on this controversial client to begin with.  (For context, please see the links at the end of this post.)

[I'm definitely not going to get into this debate - we do have products in our house with HCFS, and my son does eat them on occasion, though I try to limit those products as much as possible.  I'm not a mom blogger (unless you count a few posts a year on my houseblog), I wasn't invited to the CRA blog tour, and I don't have a relationship with MomCentral.]

But meanwhile, over in an alternate unreality, just a few weeks ago on Mad Men, Peggy found herself defending her work for a racist client to a liberal activist friend.  She suggests that her job is to help clients with their public problems; effectively, she says that it’s not up to her to decide who gets to advertise and who doesn’t.

It’s a complicated idea, but in advertising we don’t really judge people. We try to help them out of these situations. – Peggy

how do we choose our clients?

Which brings me to my point now.  As agencies or consultants, which clients should get our help – in social media, traditional media, PR or otherwise?

It’s a very tricky thing, choosing clients.  In the past, I’ve worked with Dow Chemical, even though they were linked to the Bhopal disaster in the 80s.  Was it right for my agency at the time to accept Dow as a client, even though there are still protesters and detractors over the Bhopal issue (note that Dow only bought the company that was responsible many years later)?  I would say yes; the work we were doing for Dow had nothing to do with Bhopal or the attendant PR issues, though if they had come to us for reputation management on that score I would have also gotten behind it, as long as the work we were doing was ethical and legal.

So now, hypothetically, let’s say someone from the “Kids Should Drink Beer Association” came to me and asked for my assistance.   This, of course, assumes that I’m opposed to kids drinking beer.  Which, of course, I am.  So what would I do?

I might consider taking the client if they had clear objectives that I thought I could meet.  Perhaps they need a social media policy developed, or some training on social media mechanics so they could create and manage social media themselves.  I may not agree with their association goals, but I do respect free speech, and if they want to use social media to promote their message it might behoove me to help them learn to do it ethically and transparently.

However, I do know that I would never agree to create or promote content or messaging from an organization that I fundamentally don’t believe in.  I would therefore also never promise them anything that would involve me working with others to influence the masses.  I can own my work (if I choose to create it) but no matter how hard I try I can’t guarantee that everyone I’d work with (bloggers, for example) would be fully facile with the pros and cons of the issue at hand, and therefore I wouldn’t feel ethical, say, setting up a blog tour for that client.

Others may set different standards.  Some agencies or consultants may take all clients, or they may only take those whose products or services they actually would buy or use themselves.  They may only take clients in a particular vertical or with a specific political agenda.  As agencies and consultants, we have to figure that out for ourselves; clients also have to decide who they want to work with in terms of how well their company will be received throughout the agency.

I have to assume, in our democratic society, that even though I don’t believe in a product or service that there will be someone out there who will, and that company will get the assistance or representation that they need somewhere, somehow.  And I don’t have a problem with that.  That’s the way our wondrous capitalist system works.  And if they really can’t, perhaps they shouldn’t be trying to market that product or service to begin with.

After all, we’ve all got to live with ourselves, and our clients, in the morning.

See these articles on the corn sugar-mom blogger debate if you really, really want to get mired in this:
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Related posts:

  1. The Case for Social Media Agencies
  2. Brands working with bloggers – it’s confusing

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  • http://del.ourordinarylife.com Del The Dad

    I am sure new bloggers will fill any spots that Mom Central loses. New bloggers start everyday and get sucked up just as quick. Many of them, to most won’t/don’t know whats happens in the blogosphere, they just hear free gift cards for taking a PR report to chop up and publish.

    Some companies rather pay MomCentral a chunk of money then let actual bloggers make something. Its set a standard to many that reviews only come from a review network, which is not the truth. Then people complain when they get bad pitches. Companies like mom central needs bloggers more then bloggers should need MC, but it doesnt come across like that.

    But for the companies that use mom central, they get their info up on a wide span of blogs, that clutter other opinions. As much as some MC bloggers may dislike/hate me, I am on the side of the blogger.

    • Stephanie Schwab:Socialologist

      At least companies seem to be coming around to the fact that bloggers do deserve compensation – just last year that was not so readily the case. How much, and for what work performed – still up for debate. And yes, it may vary based on whether it’s direct-to-blogger or through an agency or review network. For some brands, and bloggers, there may be a clear best option; for others it’ll be much more murky.

  • Anonymous

    Oh gosh Stephanie, I want to sit down with you over ten (HFCS-free) glasses of wine sometime and talk about all this. I’m in advertising, and I am faced with these decisions too. I have to pick and choose my battles, and I agree that pretty much any big business out there, as I said in my initial post, has skeletons somewhere.

    It would be nice if every client were Ben + Jerry’s and Amnesty International, but they’re not.

    I think what’s interesting about the MomCentral/CRA example is that it compelled many of their participants unsubscribe from their mailings or take their badges of their blogs. I would imagine even more so than when MomCentral sponsored campaigns with Barnum + Bailey. So maybe sometimes the questions we ask in determining our client roster even goes beyond ethics.

    You might have to balance the short term financial gain with potential long term negative sentiment.

    • Stephanie Schwab:Socialologist

      Liz, I’ll have a glass of the organic stuff with you anytime to talk about these and other hard questions. It’s such tough going to figure out whether to take a client to being with, even harder when you have to consider the reverberations like MomCentral has seen. Agreed that it’s all a balance – and it might be hard to know up front what the long-term will look like. Ouch.

      • @KimMoldofsky

        Just catching up. Can I join you two? I understand that when you work for an agency, you have little (if any choice) about what client projects to tackle. Bloggers, however, can pick and choose as they see fit. And they should! I highly recommend Liz’s posts about bloggers owning their words. As far as long term consequences, anyone who is reviewing this as a case study, cannot look past the blog response from MC (Borg Redux linked above). I wonder if that post turned bloggers (and maybe some brands) away from the organization.

      • Stephanie Schwab:Socialologist

        Yes! Wine all around the next time we’re together. I do feel for MomCentral a bit in that it’s hard to see a storm brewing and to understand how to handle it when you’re alone at your computer at 11:00 at night. You sort of do what you think you need to do at that moment and don’t always think about the consequences. When blogging moves at the speed of fiber optic it’s hard to step back and get perspective. But you’re right – it could have serious business implications.