Shel Holtz brings us a ditty about an HR blogger named Cheesman who auctioned himself on eBay and snagged $7,000 to promote a company at the upcoming Society of Human Resources Management conference.
The highest bidder was JobCentral. So now Monsieur Cheesman will don a JobCentral t-shirt and more.
We’ve been seeing more of this lately. Stowe Boyd is enjoying the new clothes that his sponsors bought him. Last year Snorestop on two occasions slapped their logo on someone’s skin in return for Benjamins. I saw this coming last year, but it’s escalated in the last couple of months.
Bloggers, like celebrities and sports figures are a natural choice for endorsement deals. In fact, in some circumstances they’re even more credible. So I have to wonder, where are the talent agencies in all of this?
Sure, the money paid to bloggers to endorse products is nothing like the bundle that entertainers get. So I don’t envision Jerry Maguire, Leigh Steinberg or the William Morris Agency repping us anytime soon. Still, there is a window for a lone gun or two to enter this market as agents to the citizen marketers.
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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.
