Don’t mess with mom bloggers…and plan your social media campaigns very, very carefully.
Those are the lessons Franklin Goose is learning firsthand this week after it begged off paying bloggers on a highly successful social media campaign – maybe TOO successful.
Franklin Goose, a Richmond, VA-based in-store and online retailer of eco-friendly and organic baby products, launched a blogger campaign in March 2010. They offered $5 in store credit to any blogger who posted a review of any Franklin Goose product. This post from The Saved Quarter mentions the campaign. It appears that Franklin Goose did not impose any requirements on the type or length of review, nor did it set a cap on the number of reviews it would accept or that an individual blogger could submit for credit.
Naturally, cloth-diapering and natural-products mom bloggers turned out in spades. Many wrote scads of individual reviews of products they had personally used, earning credits totaling $300 to $500 or more, in some cases, during the promotion.
It wasn’t long before Franklin Goose was quickly bombarded with over 50,000 reviews, as mentioned on their corporate blog post dated March 25, 2010. With thousands of bloggers linking in, Franklin Goose jumped to the top of Google’s search rankings for eco-friendly baby product keywords.
But Franklin Goose was logistically and financially unprepared for the impact of its viral and SEO campaign. It asked bloggers to hold off on redeeming their store credits, as they would be good for “at least” two years.
On March 26, 2010, Franklin Goose approached the review bloggers with another offer: if they officially “banked” their earned store credits for 6 months to 1 year, FG would offer up to 20% (presumably in extra store credit; the post is unclear) to the bloggers.
Some bloggers elected to use their store credits instead of banking them.
Those that elected to bank, like the author of The Saved Quarter, waited. In September, Franklin Goose issued a press release touting the campaign, and how it had built a community by issuing over $1 million in store credits. 30 days later, Franklin Goose notified bloggers with banked credits that all store credits were being placed on freeze and would be banked for another 6 months with interest.
The other shoe dropped last week. Franklin Goose announced that it had cancelled all open orders using any partial or full store credit and eliminated all store credit earned through the review program altogether. As an olive branch, Franklin Goose offered bloggers a one-time 40% off coupon for their next purchase (on regularly priced items only).
Some bloggers were outraged, and last week they began a viral campaign of their own to spread the word about Franklin Goose’s business practices. Blog posts were published, complaints were lodged at Gripe, forum discussions got heated, a Boycott Franklin Goose page was started on Facebook (now with 200+ fans), and one blogger is considering filing a class action lawsuit. Carol, from Life: Full of Unexpected Happiness, lost not only her credits but some of her own cash.
I had 3 orders in which I was waiting on items and was getting no where. I used half my credits and banked the other half. However in the end..I lost a total of $398+ because 3 of my orders was paid 1/2 through PayPal. Guess what, those PayPal payments were converted into credits with FG. So I lost real cash along with these credits. They have ignored every email from me. My last response from them was January 20, 2011. They have not responded to any emails since.
Carol felt Franklin Goose picked the wrong community to mess with:
They failed to understand how big the natural parenting community is and how these mamas do not forget about money that can use towards cloth diapers and such. Natural parenting is not cheap and in this day and time you pinch for anything and everything you can get.
Franklin Goose is trying to mitigate the PR fallout by responding to blogger allegations via its Facebook page. Both in comments and in an official letter posted in its Facebook notes, Franklin Goose apologized for having to cancel the store credit program, while pointing the finger at “prior leadership.”
But the apology backfired, too. Part of it reads:
Less than 0.5% of the 8,000 people who participated in the promotion are involved in this campaign against us and our records indicate many of them were the worst abusers of the terms of the promotion. We have also noticed that a few are either direct competitors or affiliated with competitors of Franklin Goose. Yes, there are several involved who were honest reviewers, and we regret not being able to have the resources to filter the good from the bad to honor their credits. That is why we chose to honor 40% off an entire purchase. Ultimately, since so many of the reviews were illegitimate we were compelled to take down all of the reviews.
Bloggers are now issuing responses to Franklin Goose’s letter via their blogs. The Saved Quarter responded:
Franklin Goose, we moms who boosted your SEO and gave you free content for a year are the same ones you now consider “noise” (as you said and then deleted on your Facebook page)? We moms who shared your new site with our friends, lent our names and reputations to your promotion, gave up hours with the promise of compensation, who wrote reviews that you said were great a year ago, we’re now “scammers” because we don’t love the new terms you chose? And you have the nerve to tell your merchandisers that we’re the problem?!
A PR nightmare is not Franklin Goose’s only problem, however. One of its suppliers, GroVia, a maker of cloth diapers, has suspended its account with Franklin Goose until further notice:
GroVia is also winning huge points in the blog community by offering to take care of some of Franklin Goose’s disgruntled customers by shipping out unfulfilled orders for GroVia diapers through Franklin Goose.
I attempted to reach Franklin Goose for comment on this article via Twitter, via their Facebook page, via their support email address and via the contact form on their website, and received no response as of time of publication.
Not all bloggers are upset by Franklin Goose’s actions, however. Some feel that the bloggers themselves got greedy and caused this problem by submitting too many reviews. Others, such as the blogger from Bending Birches, who also reviewed products for the program, chastised the disgruntled bloggers for complaining about not receiving “free stuff”:
Bending Birches’ comments are in such sharp contrast to the position of the disgruntled bloggers highlights that there is a great divide between bloggers on what our blogging time is worth..and if it’s worth fighting for at all.
It appears that this battle will continue to rage on, with no win-win solution on the horizon for Franklin Goose, or for the disgruntled bloggers whose work remains uncompensated.
One thing is clear. Brands, beware: viral does not mean shoot-from-the-hip, unorganized and unplanned. if you don’t take the time to plan a well-thought out social media campaign, bloggers will launch one of their own…to come back to bite you in your cloth-diapered butt.
What do you think – who’s to blame here? Do these bloggers have a right to complain? Or did they did their own grave by submitting too many reviews? What side of this debate would you take if you were directly affected? Weigh in with your thoughts.
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Speechless. And, we wonder why people have poor opinions of mom bloggers.
Great article. There is a lot to think about here. For businesses launching a social media campaign, like any other company campaign, rock solid planning is needed. For bloggers, there is value in their opinion but to me this kind of backlash kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I think like anything else there needs to be a give and take… it seems to me both sides of this look poorly and neither came out the winner…and everyone left the party unhappy.
There are certainly lessons to be learned ….both for businesses and bloggers …in my opinion.
I participated in this promotion, and, in my opinion, *one* misstep by the company would have been forgiveable. Maybe even *two*. But as you learn more about what happened, you will see that the company continually lied and took advantage of us for an entire year. I don’t think the blogger backlash is unreasonable at all considering the circumstances.
Okay wait – I’m trying to understand… Did bloggers seriously post entire articles for a $5 store credit? Seriously? $5?!?! I wouldn’t write an entire article for an actual $5 U.S. dollar bill – let alone a $5 store credit. Is that how little their time is worth? I seriously cannot wrap me head around the fact that people were willing to submit 50,000 of them either. People must think their time is really worthless.
No, not entire articles. They were product reviews… a paragraph or two at the most. I spent about 10 hours writing thoughtful reviews for products that I own, and I earned around $300 in credit.
dont see this as any different from all the people who write reviews on yelp/amazon/other sites for free – not even the $5.
The difference is that FG ran a promotional campaign to drive up traffic to their website by offering compensation or reviews. The whole goal (which they have made clear from the beginning) was to get their site to go Viral, which the program did. Now after having the reviews that they offered compensation for posted on their site as well as all the search engine placings they decide they are not going to honor the offer that they made. They didn’t decide to limit the amount of credit that could be used, or any other modifications to the program they could have done, they just erased all the credits. After that they are saying that anyone who doesn’t like how they have handled it were scamming them and taking advantage of the promotion, the one they actively encouraged everyone to participate in as much as possible.
Would reviews have been written for free without the promotion? Of course they would, but not in the way that got the search engine placements (which are worth quite a bit). Did they offer compensation freely and ACTIVELY encourage people to participate? Absolutely. Are they now a year later, after having gotten ALL the benefit from the program for a year and not allowing people to use their credits, deciding not to uphold their end of the compensation offer they made? look for yourself and see.
Gina–are you kidding me?? We at home moms try to earn income in every way possible to help support our families without working outside the home. $5 a review is actually a really good deal! Think about it.. you could probably write 25 or so reviews in an hour. That’s $125. Is your time worth so much more than the rest of us? Seriously??
I participated in their review campaign and I while I felt FG did a good job honoring people with store credit, they could’ve done the campaign differently and had their reading reviews instead of just sending credit to anyone. I chose not to bank my credit and spent it within a few months. I sincerely hope FG at least honors the orders it canceled or returns the money to people who spent real cash on orders that got canceled.
like for example, as I saw in another post, they could’ve limited the number of reviews someone submitted. OR even limited how much credit per each order you could use. you know?
I love how the company later refers to the participating bloggers as “abusers” of the system…really?
I think that this whole industry of bloggers promoting products and businesses is still so new that many business owners really don’t have a clue how to use bloggers correctly. Seems like this was a case where FG had no idea so many people would respond. I would look at this as a learning experience… for companies AND for bloggers.
They were not entire articles. They were reviews. Some moms posted really thorough reviews of products…some did not. However, instead of them weeding through them in the beginning and only keeping the true and real reviews they kept them all. The sad part is, yes it is credit…but there are many people who were depending on it. This was an agreement between Franklin Goose and consumers. They used the reviews to build up their site, build up their page rank, as well as advertisement. This is why there are so many angry at the way they have handled this. There are many ways they could have resolved this but they chose to take the coward way out and in the meantime hurting themselves. You would not write an article for a paper and not expect to be paid would you? Advertisement is what they were after and what they got. Enough they took their online store to a brick and mortar store. This was due to the revenue they built through all the reviews and all the consumers who came to their site. While yes, there were dishonest people…most of them used their credits immediately. Not saying they were all dishonest, but to think that the people who banked them to help FG out were dishonest is a little absurd.
Wow!! Your article is fabulous. It very clearly and accurately states that whole debacle. It was Franklin Goose’s responsibility to weed out the reviews that were unacceptable. They personally read every single review and manually approved them. If the reviews were not worthy of the credit then why did Franklin Goose approve them? Sorry, but I have to take the side of the moms. Franklin Goose has shown time and time again that they are a very shady business. They do not believe in honesty at all. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Not honoring your word is just shoddy business practices and the mom bloggers have every right to be upset. They provided an advertisement for them, and the mom bloggers were told they would be reimbursed for their efforts. They weren’t. This is fraud, unethical, and unacceptable. Franklin Goose needs to right their wrongs, honor the vouchers, and be sure to specify guidelines in in a future campaigns.
Bloggers are a powerful group of passionate, driven individuals. We don’t take kindly to being lied to. Bloggers who blog with integrity expect for a company to practice business with integrity as well.
If you can, please support Heather and Jennifer in their gripe against Franklin Goose. Lots of people already joined to support them. Let’s spread the word… http://www.gri.pe/3457099
This is really sad. Mainly because the women who reviewed the products weren’t doing it for something “for free.” They were WRITING for CREDIT. Which is, you know, PAYMENT. Whether we think $5 is a lot or not, it was the amount agreed upon and should have been honored. It is the company’s fault for not having better legal counsel on rules, regulations, qualifications, etc.
That time spent reviewing FG could have been spent earning credit on a different site or for a different brand. It all adds up!
Very disappointing.
I think backlash is perfect acceptable in this situation – whether it is a regular consumer or blogger – these people have been wronged. Bloggers tend to spread the word and that is precisely what they are doing here, to warn others that may be pulled into this shady practice. When someone feels “used” THAT is what leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Franklin Goose should have set a maximum number of reviews or credits that each person could do. They had to know that by offering $5 each for unlimited reviews would be a huge financial burden. I have a feeling they knew all along that they wouldn’t be paying up, or they would have made some limitations long, long ago.
Folks FG did NOT get caught off guard when this went viral. They held a contest, a 25,000 contest for a marketing idea that would make the company go viral. This credits for reviews promotion was the winning entry. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They vetted each and EVERY review before posting them and awarding the credits. What they did was get to use our reviews to sell their products FOR A YEAR. Now they are refusing to compensate the very people that made them popular.
Whether you like it or not, a contract is a contract, and Franklin Goose entered into a legally binding contract when they offered this promotion. The fact that they should have had someone with a law degree that didn’t come out of a cracker-jack box review the Terms&Conditions is entirely their fault.
I can see them suspending future review compensation with notice, IE “Any reviews posted after April 30, 2011 will not be considered” (You have to give noticed to avoid people who are working)
I have to hand it to mom-bloggers all around. This is their work. This isn’t something they do to fuck around between soap-operas, it’s a real job. I run two blogs (one work, one personal) and can’t believe how incredibly difficult the job is.
FranklinGoose deserves the storm they’ve created. They obviously didn’t do their due-diligence.
What utterly gets me is the fact that FG told everyone in the beginning, when they were all questioning whether this was legit or not, that it was for real and that credits would be honored. On their own blog FG said “if your review is not processed immediately, please be patient. It is currently taking about 2-3 days to process reviews.” So they were PROCESSING reviews!! Only the ones that THEY APPROVED were given store credit! But now they are saying that “ultimately, since so many of the reviews were illegitimate we were compelled to take down all of the reviews”??? They can’t have it both ways. They couldn’t have processed and credited all the legitimate reviews early on, only to have so many illegitimate ones a year later that they have to revoke credits. It’s insane and a complete lie and just some of the most horrible business practices….
And let’s not forget that they LIED to people who had placed orders, and said that the products were out of stock at the company level. I ordered a high chair from Boon. Franklin Goose said it was on backorder at Boon and they couldn’t get any. After noticing that others were getting the same stories from FG about other companies, I emailed Boon. Turns out Boon had the item I was waiting for. I forwarded my email from Boon to FG and they were caught in their lie. I received the high chair drop shipped the next week. I was charged $40 for shipping a drop ship item directly from the company. I had another $225 credit I never got to use. It was involuntarily banked, with the promise of gaining interest, and then revoked. These things are all in writing. They are written contracts that FG sent out. It will only be a matter of time until a lawsuit plows them under. I look forward to that day.
Thank you for providing and less bias approach to the topic. I am leaning towards Bending Birches stance, however I really do empathize with the frustrations of those who lost their own money and now can’t get ahold of anyone.
I really don’t see how FG can recover, and I don’t think that is sad. I am small business owner and I guess I can see how devastating this could be.
Don’t feel sorry for them. They are not a “mom and pop” company.. that’s what they wanted everyone to think. Do some research. You’ll find out the company they’re a part of.
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