Bolt Responds

Aaron Cohen wrote a great response to my post about his article in iMedia connection where I questioned the concept of putting a monetary value on a casual conversation between teens. I think because the article was written for a branding newsletter whose readers are mostly concerned with CPMs and ROI, his piece was appropriate. As you can see from his response below, Bolt is approaching their word of mouth marketing programs in a thoughtful manner. Also — they are a media company — not a marketing agency! And they still create content, though it's more in a blog format than articles (like they did in the early days or like Alloy has now) — and that's probably a smart move for such a community-driven site.

Here are Aaron's responses to my post:

1. Bolt has always been and will always be a media company. We aggregate young people and enable advertisers to market to them. Our business fuses content and community. Today the company employs a larger dedicated editorial team than at any time in its history. We have a diverse business model that largely focuses on Interactive advertising. Word-of-Mouth programs are a growing part of our business and we remain very enthusiastic about it.

2. Unlike many other Word-of-Mouth marketers, Bolt neither coaches our members nor rewards them for their efforts. If they are enthusiastic about the movie or sneakers that we send them, they talk about it. If they don't, they don't. Our business helps marketers with great products. Frankly, it hurts marketers with poor products.

3. In my column, I made the point that conversations in which people are rewarded for talking should be valued less than honest, authentic communications between friends. My point was about the emerging WOM industry. As I said earlier, Bolt has a very specific set of guidelines to which we adhere. These guidelines are set in order to make sure we don't ask our members to do something that we wouldn't want them to do, namely to endorse a product about which they are not enthusiastic.

You and I agree that it is vital that WOM exchanges need to remain authentic. We feel strongly that companies like Bolt should not compensate our users to talk about products because it devalues their endorsements.

What I do feel is that any WOM interaction is a far richer, meaningful and ultimately healthier interaction than virtually all other advertising. I, for one, think it is much better that kids hang out on Bolt talking about almost anything than sitting on the couch watching reruns of "Real World." [aw, come on, you can really bond over making fun of lame Real Worlders from seasons past...]

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