Baiting the (White)Moose

Take one slightly over-ambitious blogger, add to the mix a stubborn hotel founder, and wait for the fireworks. I’m sure that you have all watched over the past day or two the story unfold, now referred to as #bloggergate. Tonight, as I scroll through my social media feed, the latest is a certain hotel billing a certain blogger for “exposure” in the millions of pounds, claiming that his treatment of her email provided substantial publicity for the young blogger. As the “crisis” deepens, I thought I’d view it in a different perspective – who benefited?

Frankly, in my humble opinion, neither. The blogger comes across as a needy sponge, whilst the hotelier comes across as vindictive and inflexible.

Working with some amazing regional bloggers, we always get requests. But these requests are always respectful, and they come with a realistic set of outcomes. Have I been asked to provide five nights accommodation? No. Most who express interest do so professionally by sharing their profile, and asking if there is any interest to work together. This “influencer” approaches the matter in a rather brash, almost American style – “I am greater than you, so you should do it” style. Not good. Professional bloggers don’t apply this method – they value their partners, and approach with somewhat more sincerity. However, she clearly has worked with some ‘big names’ and that has provided her with some success – perhaps that went to her head?

Conversely, the White Moose, well within their rights to respond to the possibly unreasonable approach, took the matter too far. What has gone from a simple rejection has turned into what feels like online targeting and revenge. Follow the saga and you will see they simply don’t let it go.

Has this worked for them? Yes. They garnered a lot of support for their stance, but perhaps this ‘over-doing’ of the tit-for-tat retaliation is simply making them look unreasonable, and is further digging their grave. Only the court of public opinion will tell – has the blogger attracted further followers as a result, or lost some of her die-hard fan base; and has the White Moose experienced a sustained increase in business, or have potential customers written this off as a bad taste publicity stunt that went awry? I for one have!

Anyhow, industry commentator James McCann takes a quick look at who benefited the most from #bloggergate. Do you agree?

I for one am grateful that ‘The Donald’ is out of the news for a day or two, but will be more grateful when a more interesting scandal hits our screens and our newsstands.

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#bloggergate has been in the news cycle for four days now and all signs point to it being another PR coup for the owner of the White Moose Cafe, Paul Stenson.

No stranger to controversy, the White Moose Cafe has picked fights with vegans, breastfeeding mothers and even managed to boil the blood of a large portion of Brazil.

However, the latest controversy aimed at bloggers due to their "sense of entitlement" at requesting free accommodation at the hotel might be the biggest and most lucrative fight yet.

Following our analysis of the coverage over the past four days the White Moose Cafe has secured 53 pieces of coverage across 11 countries...so far!

On social media Paul is often boastful as to the 'free advertising' these kind of controversies generate. Our analysis shows he's not wrong generating a potential reach of 120 million people across print and online publications due to this one controversy alone.

If Paul was inclined to pay the 43 publications where the White Moose Cafe was mentioned the equivalent in advertising spend would have cost him just over €2m.

But if it was good for the White Moose Cafe, its been a whole lot better for Elle Darby, the influencer who triggered the controversy.

Elle Darby was mentioned in 114 articles across 20 countries with a potential reach of 450 million people generating close to €4.3m in equivalent advertising spend.

So is there such thing as bad publicity? According to the figures, its a no for both feuding parties.

Post-script: To View the actual data (at time of James’ analysis, check out the original article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bloggergate-who-benefited-most-james-mccann/).