The news media this week brought to light a ConAgra Foods blogger relations stunt gone bad. And so it raised an interesting question about the type of social media expertise PR firms should be able to provide to clients when stepping into this new territory.

The background:

In August, food and mommy bloggers in New York were invited to dine at a restaurant owned by the “Ultimate Cake Off” Chef, George Duran. The invitation mentioned “intimate Italian restaurant,” “four-course meal,” and catchy celebrity names. The bloggers could bring a guest and were offered a free dinner to give away to their readers. What the invitation didn’t mention was that the lasagna meal was not prepared by a chef but was rather from the frozen foods line of ConAgra Foods. Hidden cameras captured the diner’s reactions. At the end of the dinner the organizers (Ketchum Public Relations was behind the campaign) disclosed the food was from ConAgra, not the chef. Some bloggers were mortified, as their blog posts attested, others have been mum, however the story landed in the main stream media, which is a serious backfire to this PR stunt.

The study:

My reaction was to quickly post this on Google+ and ask, what would Gini Dietrich say (Gini is CEO of Arment Dietrich, and a highly respected communications professional)? And Gini said, “I was just talking to +Christopher Barger about this last night. There will definitely be a blog post on it next week. What do YOU think?”

We are not a PR firm, we are a social media marketing company. We do help our clients with blogger relations and over time we fine-tuned the formula and we continue to learn and improve on it. So here is what we would have done differently:

1. Be honest. Hiding the true nature of the event was perceived as a lie, and lying never works. They should have disclosed in the invitation, at a minimum, that this was going to be a “blind test.” Bloggers are no different from journalists – they’re inquisitive, brave minds. Treat them like you would a journalist.

2. Target appropriately. What we found with “influencer” targeting is that most businesses pull a Klout list or Technorati list but don’t really do any further research. In the past year I’ve been targeted with multiple “Klout” offers and each one of them was completely off – a men’s jacket (I’m female), an XL tshirt (again I’m female…), a children’s gift pack (I have no kids), a PSP (I am a Mac-only user) and I could go on.

You want results? You must get your targeting straight. Our blogger targeting planner contains a category we call “propensity.” That’s where we “profile” the blogger based on what they write about and also based on their disposition. Yes, disposition is key – are they vocal after an event, are their posts fair, do they have a true community around them, and more.

In this case it seems that the PR firm didn’t quite do their homework. As Cindy Zhou wrote on her blog, “I’m NOT their target consumer and they were totally off by thinking I would buy or promote their highly processed frozen foods after tricking me to taste it.”

In his open letter to George Duran, Lon, from FoodMayham.com says, “I told you first hand of our focus on wholesome food, particularly with our baby in tow.  We both said to you, with 20+ witnesses and apparently hidden cameras, how much we despise over-processed foods and artificial ingredients.  We discussed with the group the sad state of chemical-filled foods and discussed various chains.  And yet, you still fed me the exact thing I said I did not want to eat.”

3. Bring in the experts. There are two areas of expertise here that the ConAgra PR team should have explored.

• Understanding bloggers’ communities and motivations. Bloggers are not just “social influencers.” Many of them have built thriving communities around their blog and online presence. They respect and nurture those communities. It’s important to understand that bloggers won’t just blog about you because you gave them a free meal, they’ll blog about you more readily when the experience you gave them is something their community would appreciate.

As Lucretia Pruitt of the Social Joint, put it, in a comment on Mom Confessional’s post:
“I am of the firm opinion that blogger outreach should never be done by someone who hasn’t first had a blog. A blogger is not a news outlet, a focus group coordinator, or an unwitting participant in a promotional stunt. S/he is a person who has built a community based on trust, mutual interest, and mutual respect. A blogger only has one reputation to sacrifice. A young PR person can always move on to a different brand, account, or agency. Not so for the blogger s/he tanked in something like this.”

• Social media for the food industry is hard, and takes expertise. There are numerous opportunities for someone to express dislike for your food. If the smallest thing goes wrong it will be on Twitter or Facebook in 2 minutes. There’s also something I call the “8 PM syndrome.” We noticed a trend of high volume complaints that come in around 8 PM. If I am tired and stressed out, at the end of the day, and my meal is imperfect, I’ll be more prone to complain. Yes me too… Ultimately, for us humans food has emotional ties.Since food and emotions are closely related the key is to put more focus on the culture surrounding your meal and less focus on the food itself.

But there shouldn’t be a mismatch between the cultural elements and the food. The participants said the conversation was around healthy eating which increased the sense of disappointment when they learned the meal was not fresh food.

You can’t invent a culture just to do a press stunt. An event should bring out the culture that’s already central to your brand. You can’t fake it.

4. Plan and plan some more. I recently created a multi-scenario planning pack because working with people, bloggers or not, is unpredictable. So as part of our planning we build in as many “if-then” scenarios as we can. Just recently a client stopped publishing a series of blogger interviews without notice and against our advice. We were prepared. We sent a nice apology letter and a gift to the bloggers who didn’t get published. It stemmed out of respect for those who so generously gave us their time. It was the right thing to do. Because we were prepared we didn’t have to scramble to come up with a plan and execute. The plan was ready, we just executed it.

5. Don’t make everything into a reality show. I’ll let you noodle on that…

Ultimately Ketchum issued an apology via a PRWeek interview, Sept 8, 2011:

“Some of the bloggers, having been surprised, really expressed some disappointment and frustration, and in hindsight, it was not ConAgra’s intent or certainly not ours to frustrate anybody and we apologize,” said Jackie Burton, VP and director of corporate communications at Ketchum.

I tried to reach the bloggers quoted in the New York Times article but haven’t received a response yet. If it was me I’d want to put this behind me, so I can’t blame them if they don’t want to talk about it further. But I was very curious to ask them, did they receive a direct apology? And what do they wish ConAgra or Ketchum had done differently, what one big tip that would have changed everything about this situation? We may never know…

What do YOU think ConAgra and Ketchum should have done?