The OFT conducted a six month investigation into blogging network Handpicked Media which used people to blog, Twitter and comment on behalf of its clients without disclosing that it was being done in return for payment.

In a statement the OFT said that when comments are made without ‘sufficient disclosures’ to say they have been paid for, it would be ‘deceptive’.

Heather Clayton, senior director of OFT’s consumer group, said: ‘The integrity of information published online is crucial so that people can make informed decisions on how to spend their money. We expect online advertising and marketing campaigns to be transparent so consumers can clearly tell when blogs, posts and microblogs have been published in return for payment or payment in kind. We expect this to include promotions for products and services as well as editorial content.’

This is a precedent-setting enforcement action because it confirms that some of the advertising and marketing campaigns being run under the guise of social media are in fact illegal. This shouldn’t effect how PR agencies operate in social media as they can continue to focus on genuine earned word of mouth.

Wolfstar Consultancy has always operated under the principle of full disclosure and always requests that bloggers reveal how we’ve helped them – be it with review samples, free products, travel or whatever. And we have never paid for coverage.

Michael Wekall, Ryan Leander and Matthew Mahaffey had a simple mission "Do whatever it takes to wrap our arms around Taylor Swift."

In January they started by building a website www.ahugfromtayloreswift.com with their favourite quote "I’ve always been a hugger… If we all hugged more, the world would be a better place."

They then just started doing more – t-shirts, funny videos. Facebook, Twitter, their blog, YouTube and not forgetting good, old mainstream media. They kept slogging away from almost three months, creating some great content.

And then, in March Taylor Swift, suddenly responded. Not so say ‘yeah guys you can have a hug’ or to give them the brush-off. No, she decided to play their game and take it all to a new height – creating fantastic attention for he and our three guys from Auburn.

Taylor recorded a video on her website saying that she doesn’t give hugs away easily and that they’d have to earn them by completing a series of challenges.

The challenges, which she wanted to documented on YouYube videos, were:

1. Help a little old lady across the street.
2. Use the number 13 in a creative way
3. Wait for an email on Monday at 12:30pm

It wasn’t just the guys from Auburn that responded. Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans around the country started sending them their videos and photos. Michael, Ryan and Matthew edited them into funny videos.

When the email arrived it told them to get to Auburn University Hotel and get as many students as they could to create the world’s biggest karaoke sing-a-long. After 30 minutes of karaoke, Taylor appeared on the giant video screen with a personal message for the guys "Wow, I really wish that I was there to see that. I really wish that I was there right now. Wait, I have an idea…"

And then Taylor appeared on stage to give each of the guys a hug, or two…

Michael Wekall, Ryan Leander and Matthew Mahaffey that’s one great online portfolio you’ve just created for yourselves. Excellent use of public relations, social media, social networks and word of mouth marketing.

Hat-tip to Tom Murphy and Robert French.

Labour’s innovation is to provide the manifesto in a multitude of different formats to suit a wide variety of needs. The most innovative is the film produced by Ridley Scott Associates and Saatchi & Saatchi which is ideal for sharing with friends and family. In just two minutes it gives people a real insight into Labour’s policy pledges in its manifesto.

For those who want more detail you can click through and see a series of other films on specific policy areas such as the economy and health. You can also click through to download PDFs of the actual manifesto. It’s in the PDFs that you get the policy detail that highlights how solid, serious and substantial Labour’s manifesto actually is. Douglas Alexander explained that the rationale behind the animated films was to allow voters to ‘paddle, swim and dive’ into Labour’s manifesto.

Labour’s launch is about putting members and voters at the forefront. Before 1997 Peter Mandelson used to talk about winning the ‘air war’ and the ‘ground war’. The air war was the mainstream media, the ground war was pounding the streets talking to voters. Today it’s even more about the ground war. Except the ground war isn’t just on the streets, it’s online with voters and local party activists talking to each other.

In contrast to the Tories negative advertising campaigns Labour has deliberately chosen a positive theme, reflecting bright sunshine coming up over the horizon and a family looking forward to a future fair for all.

The creative manifesto isn’t just creative for the sake of it, but is also designed to reflect the importance of the creative and digital sector to the UK economy.

That’s why Labour isn’t relying on the broadcast and print media for the manifesto launch. The launch wasn’t introduced by a cabinet minister, but by Labour blogger Ellie Gellard. At the same time Labour is sharing the links to the films with party members so they can share them directly with friends, colleagues and family through email, social media and social networks.

Impressed as I am by Labour’s innovation and as new media as I am, I have to confess I’m disappointed that I won’t be walking down to WH Smith to buy all of the manifestos. Keeping an online video or PDF just isn’t the same.

DISCLOSURE: I did have a sneak preview of the manifesto.

* I used to have a collection of manifestos going back to 1979 which was the first election where I was really aware of and interested in politics (I was nearly 11).

XP: Also posted on Stuart Bruce on the World.

The guide will provide specific recommendations for different channels including blogs, Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms, social networks such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, podcasts, and video and photo sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

I haven’t seen the guidelines yet so can’t comment in detail. It’s expected that WOMMA will attempt to mandate consistent disclosure hash tags on Twitter and social network status update. Personally I’m not convinced by this, there are already ‘standards’ floating around, none of which has really taken off.

A far more sensible recommendation and one that we advocate at Wolfstar is that there should always be an easily accessible link to a page which describes what it’s all about and who is behind it – a rules, transparency and disclosure statement.

WOMMA and the USA is actually lagging somewhat behind the UK and Europe. As over here we’ve had the new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPR) since May 26, 2008. The FTC guidelines were only introduced in May 2009. The CPRs specifically outlaw ‘falsely representing oneself as a consumer’ and ‘using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion.’ The ultimate sanction for breach of the CPRs can be jail for directors and senior managers.

In the UK professional organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and trade bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau already have guidelines in place.

DISCLOSURE: I was a founder member of WOM UK and sat on its governing council for the first year. Wolfstar’s chairman Tim Sinclair was the founder member and set-up WOM UK’s partnership with WOMMA. He also worked pro-bono as WOM UK’s first chief executive to get the membership organisation started. WOM UK has simply adopted WOMMA’s code of conduct.

Today’s FT.com has an interesting article that asks "Is blogging good value for the C-suite?’. It’s quite a thought-provoking, if slightly confusing article, by-lined to Urs E. Gattiker, the inventor of My.ComMetrics.com and founder and Chief Technology Officer of CyTRAP Labs in Zurich.

Confusing, because while it asks a lot of the right questions, it isn’t entirely clear in its answers and conclusions. It also has some statements that I would certainly question. It says that ‘some people might argue that social media usually turns out to be synonymous with expensive and time consuming and no clear benefit for the company.’

I’d certainly challenge the ‘expensive’ part of the statement as that definitely isn’t one of the barriers that we normally have when talking to big brands and corporates. Indeed most are surprised at how low cost it can be in comparison to other communications activity such as advertising, conferences and exhibitions.

I would agree that one of the barriers is proving a return on investment (ROI). The difficulty is that it is very easy to provide lots of metrics in social media, but that most of these need to come with a serious health warning as they don’t ‘prove’ anything.

One conclusion that the Financial Times article inevitably leads you to is that if brands and corporates are going to blog or do any other social media or social network activity then it is absolutely essential that they do it with the right support and advice.

And it’s interesting to see the plethora of different companies all desperate to get a slice of the social media and word of mouth marketing pie [Disclosure: my company Wolfstar is a public relations led social media and word of mouth marketing consultancy.]

One of the reasons that the advertising and direct marketing agencies are winning a big slice of this pie is that they ‘claim’ to offer lots of measurement and analysis that demonstrates the ROI. I’m not sure it does. A lot of what I’ve seen is an attempt to baffle ignorant clients with pseudo-science. They do it because that is their background. They are used to trying to demonstrate the ROI of advertising and marketing spend.

On the other hand you have public relations consultancies operating in the social media and word of mouth marketing space. You usually find that they are saying much more intelligent things about ROI and social media. They aren’t pretending there is a magic wand you can wave to measure everything. That’s because PR people have always struggled to measure what we do. Our measurement metrics nearly always come with health warnings, so we are much more honest and realistic about what social media and word of mouth can achieve for our clients.

I particularly liked the last paragraph of the article which offers exactly the same advice that we are constantly giving our clients:

‘So I suggest that you identify your target audience carefully, select the social media channel you want to show a presence in and then join the conversation with some caution. Focus on quality and benchmark your efforts based upon your goals.’

Finally I might have missed this article if it wasn’t for some smart blogger outreach by Drew Benvie at Hotwire who dropped me a quick email about it, while reminding me that he was doing so in his ‘capacity as FT.com’s online PR person ’.

p.s. I had intended to also comment on My.ComMetrics.com, but the site appears to be broken – SQL errors if you use the free rank your blog service and 404s on other pages (FAQ). Pretty disastrous PR when you’ve just got a by-lined article in the FT, as I can’t imagine many interested prospects going back a second time.

Thank you James Barbour.

XP: Wolfstar blog