Manufacturers pampering journalists and bloggers with harmless little gifts and complimentary trips

In the fashion and interior decor mags, product placement is the name of the game

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By Hannu Pöppönen
     
      Recently even the Finnish clothes manufacturers have wised up to the importance of fashion blogs. Such blogs react to new fashion items rapidly, and in principle the audiences are limitless.
     
”Promotional gifts and test samples come in the mail almost every day. Most frequently they are connected with various cosmetics or haircare items. Invitations to various functions are raining down. The most valuable gift I have so far received through my blog is a mini laptop”, says Emmi Tissari, who last year launched a popular blog entitled No Fashion Victims.
      She was interviewed for this article via e-mail.
     
”Large clothing store chains, such as H&M and Bestseller, are perhaps the keenest people from the rag trade to be getting and staying in touch with me”, Tissari continues.
      Tissari, 21, studies communications and public relations, and her blog has a total of 10,000 to 15,000 visitors every day.
      Like many other fashion bloggers, Tissari also shows off on her blog the clothes she is wearing, giving the details of manufacturers and where the gear can be bought.
      However, Tissari points out that she thinks that it is important to be critical of the items of clothing she chooses to be shown on her blog.
      ”I want to be able to stand by the products I advertise on my blog. In my view, it is important that one can trust the blogger’s word. However, the reader must not forget to be critical of what she or he reads in the blogosphere”, Tissari notes.
     
”It is such a totally corrupt business”, sighs a reporter who writes about fashion.
      ”There are all kinds of parties, and every time one leaves a fashion show, one has a goodie bag in hand. Most of the gifts are just kitsch and knicknacks, such as keychains or similar accessory items, but sometimes there are even clothes”, the journalist reports.
      She thinks that such gifts are dubious but fears that refusing them could be regarded as rude.
     
Those reporters who write about interior decorating and design do not get quite so many promotional gifts lavished on them, even though such items are not entirely unfamiliar to them, either.
      For example, the Finnish glassmaker Iittala usually gives journalists a bag containing a press release and a glassware gift of some kind at their press conferences.
      Such promotional gifts are an example of the ways in which influence is exerted on the cultural journalist.
      Complimentary all-expenses-paid trips are another common practice.
      These freebies are offered to journalsts at least a few times a year, and typically, those who are doing the inviting are exhibition and trade fair organisers or companies.
     
When launching new routes or destinations, travel agencies and operators will also often offer trips to journalists or editors of women’s magazines.
      Yes, there is a small catch attached.
      ”In such a situation they might ask how extensive an article we plan to write”, the magazine journalist says.
     
Apart from that, and rather contrary to expectations, those who offer complimentary trips seem to make hardly any effort to influence the content of an article any given reporter is going to write - or even if he or she is going to write anything at all.
      ”Nobody has tried to leave a thumbprint on the contents of our articles”, confirms a reporter who has long been working for a large magazine on interiors and home decorating.
      However, it is customary to ask for all published articles after a trade fair, and if no article has been published, then it is possible that the magazine in question will no longer find itself on the short-list for invitations the following year.
      In general, the journalists keep their end of the bargain and articles are actually written on the themes offered during complimentary trips.
      Home decorating magazines usually write in a positive tone, which is why firms do not have to fear becoming the target of critical pieces.
      Information about prices and points of sale serves the magazine reader, but it also brings free advertising space for the firms whose products are being puffed.
     
”We cannot expect that if we take someone on a trip, he or she will also write about it. Our primary purpose is to initiate cooperation with editors in order that they would use us as experts when they have something to ask”, says Media Relations Manager Tarja Jäntti-Eade from Philips.
      Philips and many other electronics companies transport journalists and editors to their product launches.
      For example, reporters were invited to Amsterdam to acquaint themselves with a new line of hair straighteners, the developers of which included a famous hair stylist.
      While the reporters were testing the products, they were also given a new hairdo.
      ”They are press briefing trips. Naturally we participate and consider such trips useful. However, we do not write an article just because we have been invited on a trip”, says Heidi Laaksonen, the editor-in-chief of the décor magazine Deko, evading the actual question.
     
According to Editor-in-chief Minna Juti fromGlorian koti, another Finnish home decorating magazine, a decision on going along on such complimentary trips is made on a case-by-case basis.
      ”We can go on a freebie trip, if we think that we get some journalistic benefit from it. But never do we go anywhere just for fun”, Juti argues.
      One argument speaking in favour of such trips is that while travelling abroad journalists may make new contacts and find new themes that can help them in the competition between various magazines.
      Such themes could be for example showing off homes or exclusive interviews with designers.
      In Finland, the number of décor magazines has increased in the past few years, and they are competing not just for for readers but also for the favours of advertisers.
      Laaksonen and Juti nevertheless insist that advertisers have no impact on the journalistic contents of their magazines.
     
However, two magazine journalists writing about interior decorating have other kinds of experiences to share.
      ”For my articles and photos, I use items that I would never choose myself under any criteria. The matter can be discussed with the editor-in-chief, sure, but the product will have to be included in the article”, says the first of the two writers.
      ”Sometimes I have received comments that I should include products from a certain company, as they are important advertisers. I have said yeah, sure, sure, but I actually think that all our choices should be our own and not the advertisers', and that advertising must not affect our opinions”, the other adds.
     
     
This article is one in a series run by Helsingin Sanomat on the ways in which influence is exerted on cultural journalism in different fields. An earlier piece in the same series, this time examining the journalistic pitfalls of the computer games magazine business, can be found from the links below.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 26.3.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Computer games industry puts the squeeze on reporters (23.3.2010)

Links:
  Product placement (Wikipedia)
  "No Fashion Victims"

HANNU PÖPPÖNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
hannu.popponen@hs.fi