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The Self-Appointed Empress Has No Clothes Because They Are Still In Her Kenmore Dryer, Which We Still Are Not Sure If She Got For Free Or Bought Herself

by anna on 06.04.2010

The other day, we were talking about PR and whether or not mommybloggers should bother with going to these absurd events. I talked about how I had found myself suckered into wasting several hours of my own time on an event View definition in a new window recently and I couldn’t really understand how it had happened. In the course of the conversation, a story about a then-unnamed blogger who had done a sponsored post for Kenmore came up. What I had thought, originally, had happened was that this blogger had received a free washer/dryer set in exchange for writing a post. In my mind, this would have been a decent business trade, because that would work out to be like $2,500 for one post. In my book, that’s a good barter, and I’m not one of those people who throws stones about getting paid in gift cards or whatever. After discussing the matter with some other bloggers who had worked with Kenmore, I know that *at least in some cases*, washer/dryers have been given to bloggers in exchange for working with Kenmore. This doesn’t mean that this is the deal they have with every blogger, but I do know for a fact that it is a deal they offer to some bloggers, so it is not unreasonable to assume it was one that might have been the case here.

But then I realized that the original post has said that the washers had been a temporary “loan,” that it had been a “tryout,” for that blogger. So, this was an absurd situation in my mind because of the logistics of it all (did they come and take the old set out and store it in the backyard? did they take it off site? why would anyone agree to this? etc.). Why wouldn’t Kenmore just give the blogger the damn set? Why would they want to come off looking so cheap? I don’t know a lot about Kenmore as a brand, but I cannot imagine that they are working with so many bloggers that they cannot afford to give a blogger a washer/dryer set. But the post said it was a loaner, and then Jessica tweeted that she went out and bought the same set, in a different color, which also supported the idea that they hadn’t given her the set.

So, I thought I’d go to the source for three reasons: 1) to determine if the people at Kenmore are such fantastically smart marketing geniuses that they managed to get a Nielsen Power Mom to buy a set of washer/dryers based on a two month loaner period for which she wrote a long, otherwise uncompensated post on her blog; 2) to see if Jessica’s many claims of never working “for cheap or for free” are in fact true; and 3) because I know Jessica relishes hearing from me. So I wrote Jessica the following email:

Jessica,

I was hoping you could clear up some confusion regarding your relationship with Kenmore for a post I’m writing about compensation for working with brands. If you’d rather not, I of course understand. Here is what I’d like to know:

  • Did you get a washer/dryer set from them in exchange for working with them?
  • Was this a temporary loan situation, as is suggested by your post of March 11, 2010, or were you allowed to keep the washer/dryer set?
  • If it was temporary, how were the logistics of this worked out? Did they move your previous washer/dryer set into your backyard in the interim, or off site? Were arrangements made to put the set back into your home at the end of the trial period?
  • If the set was in fact a compensation for working with Kenmore, why did you suggest that it was a temporary loan? Also, why did you then purchase another of the same washer/dryer set model, and announce this on Twitter?

Thanks for all of your help on this matter.

Anna

Here’s her response:

Make something up.

You always do.

Typos?
Blame my iPhone or my colluge

www.JessicaGottlieb.com

I made sure to confirm with her that it was OK to quote her on this, and she said sure. I also asked Kenmore to comment on the matter. After some back and forth about the actual content of my post, I finally just told the Kenmore representative that what I wanted to know was whether or not the washer/dryer set had been given to Gottlieb or not. (I don’t have clearance to post the email exchange here, or else I would). I did not get a comment one way or the other on that matter as of the time of this post; if one comes in, I will update the post to reflect it. I *would* like to note that whomever is running the @KenmoreConnect twitter account had an opportunity to correct any misconceptions when Gottlieb tweeted about it, but failed to do so.

Who Cares?

Here’s why I care about this: obviously there are many people who aren’t telling the truth here, which fine, not everybody has to disclose all of the details of the deals they make. But, practice what you preach. If you don’t want to be paid via barter, like you got on the Eleven Moms last year for doing with gift cards, then practice what you preach. If you want to be thought of as a good businessperson, then don’t work for free. Don’t just SAY that you don’t work for free — DON’T WORK FOR FREE. Do not, for example, write a long post about Lexus on your blog for which you are not being compensated (except being invited to go to a PR event). Do not let somebody put a washer/dryer set in your house for a few months and write a post about it and then go out buy the same set, and call yourself a good businesswoman. Because that’s a dumb deal. It’s a bad deal. That’s WORSE than working for free. That’s walking away from your relationship with a brand one blog post and $2,500 poorer.

Unless, of course, you DID get the set to keep, in which case — good for you. Just be honest about it.

If you DID get to keep the set, why on EARTH would you lie about it? And why on EARTH would Kenmore go along with it? Furthermore, why are you making your (god only knows who these people are) legions of followers read about Lexus if you’re not being paid by them? Are you trying to make them think that you are? And if you ARE being paid by Lexus, why are you not disclosing? Either you are working for free or you are breaking the law — you choose.

No more smoke and mirrors. The empress has no clothes. They’re still in her dryer. That she might have gotten for free. I’m still not sure.

UPDATE: This is in from Kenmore:

I can’t really refute information directly without knowing what the information is. But here are the facts:

  1. We loaned Jessica one of our new washer/dryer sets for two months to try out
  2. She donated her old top-load washer and dryer to http://www.achieveglendale.org/main.html (her friend @hardlynormal works there)
  3. She liked the washer/dryer and purchased a new set of the same model in a different color for herself (hence the tweet regarding purchasing a new set)
  4. Admittedly, the loan period did stretch longer than the planned two months, as Jessica didn’t have a chance to pick up her new machines and the plan was to pick up the test models when the new ones were delivered

For those of you playing at home, this means that all of Gottlieb’s claims about the washer relationship have (thankfully) been true. It also means that Kenmore is being truthful.

The claims about not working for “cheap or for free,” though, not so much. Because Kenmore lowballed her and she took the deal.

UPDATE: Here’s the You Tube video where Jessica shows us her laundry room that she’s having remodeled to accommodate her loaner set of washers from Kenmore:

FURTHER UPDATE: The receipt has now been posted by she who does not work for cheap or for free.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I wrote this post without realizing that one of the many times Gottlieb had criticized bloggers working for free was with the Brand Ambassador Program for Sears (which owns Kenmore). Is that irony, or Alanis Irony? Or what? How many days have we been doing this now? Which way is up?

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Suburban Bliss v. Chicken Liver Smackdown: Postponed Indefinitely, PLUS: Some Unsolicited Moralizing By Me

by anna on 04.06.2010

chicken liver versus suburban bliss

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have caught the announcement that Michelle McBee (aka Chicken Liver View definition in a new window of the now-defunct Poop On Peeps) will be featured in an interview alongside Melissa Summers View definition in a new window (Suburban Bliss) on MSNBC. Though the interview was originally scheduled to take place on Tuesday at 12:00 pm PST, it has since been bumped in favor of covering the mine explosion in West Virginia. The interview was supposed to be rescheduled for Wednesday at noon, but I’m not hearing that it’s postponed “until a later date.” We will see if and when it happens, and if it does, I’ll be covering it live here.

Right about now, you’re wondering how any of this relates to personal finance, even using the loose definition that I use on this blog. Well, lately, incidents have been piling on top of incidents where the mainstream media is somehow in a position where they want to cover news about mommybloggers. From a very big-picture point of view, this is a good thing for those of us trying to make businesses out of our blogs, because the more visibility we have with the general public, the more people we have visiting our blogs, possibly reading them, and then becoming consumers that we can target with advertising or sales opportunities. That is the bottom line, capitalist way of viewing this phenomenon. All publicity is good publicity, and all that. However, what seems to keep happening with these things is that people are all too willing to go to the press to talk about this stuff, and then when the article or news show comes out, they are outraged at how they are portrayed. And then the community at large gets involved, and they are even more outraged at how they are portrayed, and blame goes all over the place, usually directed at the reporters and the news outlets themselves, and Facebook fan pages are started against the New York Times, et cetera et cetera.

Here’s the thing: if you don’t like how the media is portraying you, stop talking to the media. Stop giving them material to work with. This has worked for public figures since the beginning of time. You know why we don’t see Tom Cruise jumping on couches anymore? Because he got a PR guy who locked that shit down. Maybe you need one of those, too.

And if you don’t like how the media is portraying your community, perhaps you need to rethink your definition of community. Personally, I take interest in all of these media appearances — I eat it all up, and always want more. I know it’s fashionable to say, “Oh, I hate the drama, I want to focus on the positive,” and I get that impulse, but for me, there’s so many interesting things going on at once here, it’s impossible to ignore it. It’s not that I think that there aren’t wonderful things to talk about with the mommyblogging community: I just think there are people far more qualified to talk about those things than myself. I’m good at talking about the crap that everyone else is afraid to talk about. Does it sometimes make my life difficult? Oh hell yes. But, contrary to what some people might have been hoping, even when I’m told to “go right ahead and suck it View definition in a new window,” I’m not going to just shrivel up and die.

Do I worry that these mommybloggers taking their feuds public makes me look bad? Not really. Guess what? They’re not me. They’re moms who blog, and I’m a mom who blogs, but we have different audiences, different topics, different goals, and a different set of moral structures. I’m happy to embrace the mommyblogger label because, hey, that’s where the advertising money is, friends, and I’m a capitalist. Why are you all taking a label placed on us by advertisers so much to heart? Do I worry that these kind of media appearances will make me look bad? No way! I am quite capable of making myself look bad on my own, thank you very much. And I think we should stop worrying about that. Take responsibility for yourselves. Worry about keeping your side of the street clean, and the rest will fall into place.

UPDATE: Melissa Summers’ radio interview is here.

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Friction And The Sale of Digital Media

by anna on 12.30.2009

There has been a dearth of acceptable television programming on of late, and so to fill in the gaps the other night, Mr. Right-Click and I decided to order a movie from our DirecTV DVR. We actually have several “instant” movie watching options at our home at present, including Netflix instant queue, Blockbuster instant, and Amazon on demand video. The supposed ability of the DirecTV DVR to offer on-demand videos is a relatively recent innovation, and we’re about as committed to it as we are to any other form of instant media. None of these brands has won our loyalty at present, and so our business is really up for grabs.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that all of these services suck for one reason or another, and usually there is a combination of factors contributing to the suckage. Rather than bore you with the details of why each service sucks, I’ve provided a helpful visual aid above that details the annoying factor of each service we currently have access to at the Right-Click household. You would think, with so many choices, that we would easily locate a movie worth watching in less time than it took us to realize that it’s crazy to pay so much money for a movie we don’t even get to keep permanently. Because that is the point of these services, right? You order them so quickly that you don’t have time to think about what the profit margin must be on them.

Only, for some reason, this is not how it works. How this works is that there is so many layers of goddamn friction involved in ordering a movie on demand that you end up just throwing up your arms in despair and saying, as Mr. Right-Click said the other night, “An additional $1.99 “service fee”?! Because I had to call them to inform them of faulty service? I WOULD RATHER SIT HERE IN THE DARK THAN PAY ANOTHER $1.99 TO SEE GODDAMN FOUR CHRISTMASES.”

There was an article on Snarkmarket a while back about how the reason that iTunes is so successful is that they have made it a priority to eliminate as much friction as possible in the sale of a song or an album. They have made it so easy, that it feels almost like free when you buy it. And so therefore you’re less likely to bitch about the price of the song or the fact that most songs are exactly the same price, even if nobody ever buys them. This is the same thing that Amazon has mastered with their ordering process: once you’ve set up your account, it takes like two clicks to buy stuff there, and it’s almost like you’re not buying it at all. You might see that it’s more expensive to buy your hair gel on Amazon than if you go to the store, but this way, you don’t have to go to the store, and it takes less than two seconds out of your day. That’s money well spent.

Video on demand at home should be the simplest fucking thing in the world. Plug it in, pick a movie, pay your exorbitant fee for a movie because it’s quick, it doesn’t require me to go to the video store, and you always have what I want in stock. When are you fools going to figure this out?

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