Let me start by saying that this post features a lot of generalisations. It is not about one specific person or one review. It is an outpouring of things from my brain across the keyboard and to the screen, the result of seeing perhaps one too many of the sort of person or review that is generally being described. It is a brief explanation about how humans work, how humans can be manipulated, and about how this factors into the world of sponsored travel writing. In general.
Let me further add that if you like only positive travel things then you really shouldn’t have started reading a post with a title like this in the first place (what the hell were you expecting!?) and I’d strongly suggest you might want to click that Close Tab button now.
This post carries on a little bit from the previous blog post where I decided to rant about PR invites (it’s a pet peeve of mine; live with it; write about how amazing they are on your own site if it’s something that gets you emotional) but more specifically this has been inspired by a few conversations I’ve stumbled upon on Facebook and Twitter regarding the use of sponsored hashtags. In case you aren’t aware there’s been a big push over the last year to ensure that anyone receiving some benefit from a piece of reviewing – whether that’s a hefty discount, some freebies, the entire trip paid for, etc. – needs to disclose this prominently (i.e. not buried at the bottom of a 4000-word article or hidden in a euphemism such as “I was invited to see…” (which still happens an awful, awful lot)), and where hashtags feature on social media platforms you’ll now see a lot of #Ad or #SponsoredTrip or #Gifted or some other variation for just this reason. In the cases of some people you’re now left wondering if they wouldn’t simply be better off prefixing their online presence names with one of those tags to save time and effort but that’s not for this post to go into.
There has been an argument against this disclosure, stating that the same rules don’t apply to non-digital platforms – newspapers and magazines will review trips without mentioning whether the trip was a media jolly, for instance – and that’s true, but as someone who doesn’t do promotional work I lean heavily towards bringing non-digital publishing up to the same standard as the new rules for the online world as opposed to scrapping that disclosure. That reasoning will also become clearer further down.
There has also been an argument that the act of writing a review and selecting photos is work and therefore the freebie labelling shouldn’t apply. I reject this argument out of hand. If I’ve paid to visit a monastery and you haven’t but we both write reviews then we’ve done the same amount of work. One of those visits was decidedly more free than the other. It is important that people reading those reviews know who saved up and spent their own earnings and who got something for considerably less outlay.
Why is that important?
Human psychology. You probably could have guessed that answer from the title of this blog post. More accurately, though, it’s human psychology as exploited by marketing people.
Last year we had a run-in with some scam artists. We spotted the scam, confronted the scammers, weren’t affected by it. As I spent many years helping to run a sceptical society in Portsmouth this came naturally to me plus I don’t trust humans anyway. You’re all scum; some just more than others. A little while after this incident we attended a lecture on a cruise ship all about spotting scam artists, given by a former police detective; we attended specifically because we had a vested interest. There was much we knew already but there were also some insights I’d not considered before. There is, it transpires, a close association between scam artists and marketing or salespeople. I’m not saying that marketing people are running a scam; I’m saying they use the same techniques to achieve their aims. The following photo of one of the lecture’s slides shows some of the psychological triggers that work on scam victims and those highly subject to marketing techniques (click, scroll down, view full size if you can’t read them). One of those techniques heavily relates to what this post is about.
The Free Gift
Why do art auctions and shop events on cruise ships give out free glasses of champagne or little trinkets? Why do shops in the street or supermarkets sometimes have free samples on offer? Why do you see so many of those “Free gift just for attending” events? You might think that it’s to make you tipsy in the case of champagne (but then you’ve clearly never had ship champagne) or that it’s so you can see if you like something in order to make a purchase later in the case of free samples. But that’s not the case at all. Scam artists employ the same tactics and it’s not to make sales. The reason is that it plays on human emotions and the psychology of receiving something “for free”. It makes people more receptive to persuasion because this is a friendly action and you’ve got something for nothing so it would be nice if you could return the favour in some small way. It plays on guilt. You are far more likely to consider something positively if you think you’ve got something out of it and don’t want the other person to lose out too much. A marketing person’s “strong sales lead” is often a scam artist’s “sucker”.
This carries over into the reviews that then spawn from free trips. A positive frame of mind and a feeling that “well, it hasn’t cost me anything so…” will find their way into reviews. That’s okay if all you’re looking for from a review is an advert because, ultimately, that’s where a lot of these reviews start heading whether the author thinks so or not (and that is what the PR companies want). It’s also okay if it’s done as a fully-aware comparative study of the experience; I’ve seen gifted trip reviews where the person writing stated up front that things were a lot different on this occasion because they didn’t have to pay and the people hosting knew that they were reviewing so attitudes might not reflect reality for normal visitors. It’s okay if what is produced isn’t an actual review. I.e. a list of tips or some facts about a place is fine because those things won’t be different for someone who turns up later.
Where it’s not okay – to me – is where an account is effectively passed off as a normal experience. It’s misleading. Now, I know that everyone has different experiences anyway and we all have to try to take those into account but the problem is still there. Hop on any forum where people are posting reviews of trips they’ve taken and the really bad reviews will outnumber the really good ones because that’s what people want to get off their chests; most trips aren’t absolutely perfect so they fall into the “I enjoyed this but not enough to write anything about it” category. Human nature at work again. Move away from the forums and into the world of sponsored or press trips and it’s the complete opposite: things are amazing, people were so friendly, what an incredible experience!
I’m not saying that these people are deliberately overly positive because they want to stay on the lists that allow them to get free things. That said, I couldn’t really blame them if that was the case because, again, the psychology of humans comes into play here and that is the goal of the travel’s PR people after all, but consider these scenarios:
Scenario A: You’ve worked hard, saved up, splashed out, are paying a not insubstantial amount per person per night for this trip of a lifetime, and it’s just taken 20 minutes to get served a drink in a mostly empty lounge.
Scenario B: You were invited on a trip, your travel was taken care of, you’ve been treated to some perks for free, and it’s just taken 20 minutes to get served a drink in a mostly empty lounge.
In one of those instances, consciously or not, you are more likely to excuse the poor service (“that didn’t really bother me because everyone’s been so nice”) and if that makes its way into your writing then what you’re writing has just become worthless for anyone reading it. You might not care because you got something for free. The marketing people might not care because your positive advert is reaching an audience, some of whom are about to fall headfirst into one of those other psychological trigger categories of listening to the expert advice from someone they like who has demonstrated social proof that other people are doing it. You see how it all comes together. And why I consider it mostly worthless writing.
And trust me, I know a lot about worthless writing. I’ve saved you from making that remark yourself. That’s how nice I am, deep down, where it rarely shows.
A Perfect World
All this is to really say that I approve of the tagging of sponsored posts and approve of moves to make it much clearer to people reading those posts that experiences will most likely be not as positive as described. In a perfect world none of this would be necessary because people would have enough common sense to be able to see through the PR techniques that do such a good job of glossing over issues but we’re not living in a perfect world and we’re travelling further from that destination every day.
Featured image is a brown booby, as spotted from the promenade deck of a ship on a cruise we paid for all by ourselves so you can be certain that any positive feelings you’re getting from looking at it have not been influenced by marketing people. Apologies if you’re ornithophobic.