You may have noticed that, once again, Beer and Coding is without sponsorship. When it came time for my advertiser to renew, they informed me that currently, they were only interested in paid posts. I mention this not because I am angry about their decision, but because while pondering the ethics of writing a puff piece, I realized that there is a lot of grey area between altruistic beer blogger and shameless beer shill. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look at my position on a few blogging hot points, and then see how they compare to the rest of the beer blogging community.

Advertisers/Sponsors – Advertising and sponsorship are concepts, with which I have no qualms. Most bloggers incur some costs to maintain their web presence, be it hosting, domain renewal, travel or simply time. Running ads and securing sponsors are probably the most transparent ways a blogger can offset these costs.

Reviewing an advertiser’s product is where things can get tricky, especially if the review is not a flattering one. The interwebs are lousy with examples of soft reviews in order to secure or preserve a revenue stream; video game review sites being notorious for it. Luckily, beer blogging seems to be fairly unaffected. And when the occasional softball is thrown, the community is quick to respond.

Free Schwag - I will admit that, on occasion, I receive free beer to review. I see nothing inherently wrong with schwag, as long as it doesn’t influence the opinion of the reviewer. Of course breweries, or marketing agencies in most cases, are banking on the fact that it will have an effect. Some are blatant enough to spell it right out for you.

Example:
“At …. we are always looking for new and innovative ways to get the word out about our quality products. I would like to send to you a sample bottle of …. for review. If we feel your review is consistent with the message we are trying to put forth, we will include you in future product reviews. As a prominent voice in the beer community, your opinion is important to us at …. and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on ….”

So, immediately after insinuating that a positive review would be rewarded, they state that my opinion is important. You’ve got to love marketing. I am completely opposed to this kind of carrot dangling, but I can see the allure. Although, when you think about it, positively reviewing bad beer to ensure a steady supply of bad beer seems like a lot of work for masochistic. I love beer, but not that much.

I won’t say which brewery the above excerpt was sent on behalf of, but I will say that I replied by stating that I would be happy to provide an honest review of their product. Surprise, surprise, I did not hear back from them.

Paid Posts – Paid blog posts come in a couple different flavors. The first, and least offensive in my opinion, is the straight-forward advertisement, posing as a blog entry. I consider this akin to a newspaper running a full-page ad.

I frequently write about upcoming events and occasionally post interesting press releases; the kind of information you might find in a paid post. I have never been compensated for these activities and I imagine most, if not all other beer bloggers are in the same boat. We beer bloggers take pride in our craft beer community, and where other industries must pay for exposure, we are eager to give it away. I think this is the main reason paid posts are not more prevalent in beer blogging, we are already doing the work for free. And while I personally would not run this type of paid post, as long as it is clearly portrayed as an advertisement, I see doing so as more of an annoyance than a damnable action.

The next type of paid post, the paid guest post, I’m not so keen on. These posts, written by companies hide advertisement within what is usually topical information. I liken these to the “special promotion” pages that litter magazines. Wired is notorious for featuring ads, veiled as content. The latest issue, for example, features an advertisement for NBC’s The Cape, formatted to look like one of the magazine’s product breakdowns. What makes this type of paid post more deplorable is that it is usually presented as neutral information and little effort is made by the blogger to alert reader to fact that it is an advertisement.

I never took the conversation far enough to find out which type of paid post my former advertiser was interested in, but looking around the interwebs, I can see that they leverage both.

Paid Reviews - Like paid posts, paid reviews come in a couple varieties. Some paid reviews are written by the blogger, but many are provided, ready to post, by the paying company. Point, click, collect. While I can see the arguments in favor of paid posts, I find absolutely no integrity in paid reviews. Whenever I see a phrase like, “I received monetary compensation for my time spent reviewing ….” grace the bottom of a post, I cease reading the blog. Done.

I’m not sure if it’s the relatively small size of the beer blogging community, or perhaps the closeness of it, but, again, we seem less willing to allow our opinions to be influenced by the almighty dollar. Not to say there aren’t any beer sites (you know who you are) offering paid reviews. Fortunately, the number is minimal and as far as I can tell, breweries aren’t biting.

So, there you have it; my much longer than anticipated thoughts on the ethics of beer blogging. And since I know many of you reading this post are bloggers of one persuasion or another, I am interested to hear your opinions. I feel my position is pragmatic, but where does it sit with you? Too preachy, too lenient? Where do you draw your ethical line in the sand?

Cheers!
Kevin