Am I Famous Now…

After my first post about the invite for the LG Shine Bloggers program, Gaylene mailed me the next day with an updated link to the code of ethics maintained by Hills & Knowlton for the program and the LG Shine Blog.

I think their Code of Conduct is correct, but more interesting I found the link to Hills & Knowlton’s Media Principles.

Employees of Hill & Knowlton, Inc. have pledged to uphold these principles in the course of their dealings with online communities on behalf of our clients.

1. We will not engage with social or consumer-generated media on behalf of a client without their knowledge, or if it contravenes a client’s own policies.
2. We will always disclose who we are and who we are working for (both our agency and omur client).
3. We will never pretend to be someone or something we are not.
4. We will take time to understand the rules, beliefs and desires that exist within the online communities we use to communicate. [emphasis mine]
5. We will respect any privacy and contact preferences of each individual.
6. We will refuse to undertake work that requires us to compromise these principles.

If you believe one of our employees has breached these principles, please send as much information as possible (including links and copies of correspondence) to Tony Burgess-Webb, Chief Marketing Officer.

The disclosure policy is admirable, but I surely respect #4.

We will take time to understand the rules, beliefs and desires that exist within the online communities we use to communicate.

As Microsoft and Edelman have learned, the blogosphere can be a rough WildWestWeb and disclosure is the main key to gain the respect of bloggers.
Personally I had loved to read on the LG Shine Blog that bloggers had already been invited to test pre-release models (mine is on the way) and under what the rules for participation are.
As expected their are some conditions, conditions disclosed in Gaylene’s second mail.

• The phone is provided to you on a long-term loan. You can keep it for as long as you use it. If you stop using it, please return it to us.
• Let us know if you have any conflicts of interest in accepting the phone. This includes, but is not limited to, being employed in the mobile telecommunications industry and having other mobile phone companies as clients.
• The phone remains the property of LG Mobile, who can request its return at any time. You cannot sell or loan the phone to others.
• Please keep all the original packaging.
• We will link to your blog from The Shine Blog (http://Shine.lgbloggers.com).
• Please check the Shine Blog regularly (and ideally subscribe to the RSS feed) to keep up to date with any announcements about the program.
• If you encounter any problems with the operation of the phone, please contact us first.
• There is absolutely no obligation to mention the phone or this program on your blog. However if you do, we recommend that you disclose your relationship with LG Mobile.

As can be found in those rules, participants are not allowed to keep the phone, or sell it¹. The reason why it is important to mention this upfront when communicating with bloggers is simple : the blogosphere is very fast link and trackback medium and if things, conditions aren’t clear they can easily be misunderstood, as can be seen at Quick Online Tips entry about my participation to the program (Thanks for the mention).

Being a blogger today can win you some tech freebies. Remember Microsoft gifting free Acer Ferrari Laptops with Windows Vista to top technology bloggers.

It surely is a wonderful act that LG/Hills & Knowlton use a blog entry to invite even more participants, but I think it is important to disclose everything as soon as possible. A supplementary page in the blog with the rules for participation would be a good thing. Just like every game/contest offline has his participation rules printed.

Anyway I look forward to play around with the phone in the next days, weeks.

¹ Even knowing that the phone can’t be kept, I would still have participated. And if, I would not have kept it anyway, but sold and given the benefit to a local charity.