At Everywhere, we interact with bloggers every day. We often reach out to bloggers to share the campaigns of our clients. One thing we aim to never do is force-feed bloggers by throwing out content and expecting bloggers to regurgitate it.

Recently, Ketchum (a shop where I worked several years ago), found themselves in a force-feeding frenzy with food bloggers flinging rotten apples right back at them. Only they weren’t just force-feeding bloggers copy to put up on their blogs, they were dishing out frozen dinners disguised as gourmet fare. Ketchum, along with ConAgra, conceived of a stunt where they invited New York area food bloggers to dine at an exclusive Manhattan restaurant called Sotto Terra, with George Duran and Phil Lempert. George is a chef, entertainer and host of the popular TLC show, “Ultimate Cake Off”. Phil is the “supermarket guru” who advocates smarter shopping, healthier eating and better living. The event was billed as an exclusive affair with only a limited number of seatings and invitees were baited with a “big surprise.” If I were a food blogger, I’d be thinking, “What, is Anthony Bourdain going to jump out of a cake?

The bloggers arrived, were plied with sangria and mojito granitas. They chatted with Phil and George about healthy eating, organic food and one blogger from FoodMayhem even offered George tips on weaning his baby to solid food. They munched on stuffed endives, gazpacho, arugula salad and lasagna. At the end of the meal, fully sated, the bloggers got their big surprise. Turns out the lasagna was made by Marie Callender herself. Only Marie Callender is dead. So is her son, Don. by the way, who founded a restaurant chain a long time ago and named it after his mom. So the bloggers got the frozen stuff, the kind that comes with 43% fat calories and food coloring.

In the course of my life, people have tried to serve me Rocky Mountain oysters and when I was recently in Beirut, I was offered Lebanese caviar. I’ve never fallen for the trick. I haven’t had a frozen dinner since Swanson stopped calling them TV dinners. I’m no Andrew Zimmern and certainly don’t like to be tricked about what I’m eating. I’m also not a food blogger but I’m not surprised by the way the they reacted when told that the “big surprise” was that they’d just been served mass-market frozen lasagna. And another wee surprise which was, “oh, by the way, we’ve been secretly filming you and won’t you sign this release so we can use your image in a commercial?”

The bloggers were not amused. Here’s how FoodMayhem responded in an open letter to George Duran.

“Let’s consider a more personal hypothetical: George, how would you feel if invited to my home, fed chicken cordon bleu, and then afterwards informed that we had secretly stuffed the cavity with entrails of rats found in the street, cleansed using various chemicals from the utility closet, such as bleach (also food safe in small quantities).”

There were enough negative foodie blogs posts about the entire incident to warrant a story in the New York Times.

Ironically, this all came up during a week when we were in the midst of a brainstorm for a new client. Our colleague, the blogger Katja Presnal, was part of the ideation session and she offered the best suggestion of all: “I know, let’s ask the bloggers what they think of that!” And that’s what any brand should do before rolling out a blogging campaign. Ask a blogger, or two, or better yet, form an entire community around your idea and get their feedback. Oh and by the way, no force-feeding. That went out with TV dinners.

p.s. Katja offered to share her own commentary on our blog on the entire incident. She writes: “In my opinion the biggest mistake what the agency did wasn’t even lying the bloggers – they probably did it in good faith and thought bloggers would find it funny. The biggest mistake they did was doing a “me too” campaign copying tactics that Domino Pizza and others have used with great results. As I always say, you need to use your butt muscle in social media: sit down and do your job. It was such an easy way out to copy someone else’s idea and give it a new spin, and when campaign tactics are copied this way, there is always a risk of them not fitting your brand or target market. Working together with bloggers to create the campaigns is a great way to bring fresh ideas to the table; after all, especially in this case, bloggers are pivotal for success of the social media campaign and they know which idea is something they want to stand behind, and which not.”

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