Dan Warne28 December 2006, 6:15 AM
Microsoft has been caught out sending top-of-the-line laptops preloaded with Vista Ultimate to bloggers who have been covering Vista. The company says it's not a bribe because if bloggers wish they can choose to send the laptops back.
When is a bribe not a bribe? When the person receiving the bribe can give it back if they want to -- at least, that's according to Microsoft.
Australian blogger Long Zheng broke the news overnight that just weeks before the main public launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft
sent a raft of influentual bloggers a free top-of-the-line laptop, with Vista pre-installed of course.
The problem with that? Microsoft doesn't make laptops -- it makes operating systems. It didn't send out a loan laptop with a free copy of its operating system, it sent out a laptop to keep.
The argument made by the Microsoft manager responsible for the promotion, Aaron Coldiron, is that technically these are "review" laptops. He quoted the statement made to each of the bloggers: "you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it."
The argument didn't wash with readers. "Sorry, but that’s a ridiculous argument," said a reader of Zheng's blog, JasonMR. "Sounds like giving a wad of cash to a copper [wink, wink], asking them to check if they are fakes, and then leaving it up to them to decide to either keep them for personal use or hand them back - and then say that it was not a case of bribing a police officer."
Blogger Scott Beale said Microsoft's PR company, Edelman, had contacted him and offered him a "present" of a free laptop with "no strings attached".
What's really behind the 'gift'
Anyone who has worked in an 'influencer' position in an organisation knows how thick and fast the offers of dinners, trips and freebies start piling up. Suddenly, PR and sales people take a great personal interest in you. They know your wife's name. They know your interests and tastes in wine.
But let's face it -- it's not like you suddenly became a much more charismatic person when you moved out of your 'cog in the corporate machine' role and into your 'decision making role'. They have a file on you, and it's their job to make you feel loved.
Corporate schmoozers know that although there's no spoken expectation of anything in return for their generosity, the laws of reciprocity make us humans want to do something nice in return. Like glossing over deficiencies in their product when making a purchasing recommendation to their company, or, in the case of journalists, looking on the bright side when writing a product review (for fear of endangering future freebies).
Smart professionals, in corporate purchasing departments, for example, know that it's important to be cautious about accepting gifts and freebies, because their credibility and career is at stake. Will their employer believe that they've made a decision that's best for the company if they recommend a vendor that gave them a big gift?
The same applies in media, of course. The business model is simple: if journalists report the good and the bad impartially, they'll build a big and trusting audience. Access to that audience is valuable to advertisers, who will rent space to put up their message. If a publication start toeing an advertiser's line in the editorial, readers will go elsewhere and access to that audience -- in the form of advertising space -- can't be sold for as much to advertisers.
Professional publishers know this, and the despite constant tug-of-war between the ad sales people and the editorial team, publishers and editors know that to protect their business, it's important to retain separation between ads and editorial reporting.
One blogger, Brandon LeBlanc, mentioned on his blog that he'd 'traded up to' a new Acer Ferrari notebook from his old Dell XPS 1710, but neglected to mention it was a gift from Microsoft. Hours later, after being savaged by reader comments accusing him of being a sell-out to Microsoft, he added a note to the end of the story disclosing the gift. "I’m owning up to the problem, I’m owning up to the fact I messed up and I have continued to do so. I don’t care to “cover my back” regarding this matter," he said.
"It looks bad from every angle! What’s worse? Blogger kissing up to Microsoft, Microsoft sending out expensive gift, [...] the blogger not disclosing it, calling it a ‘trade-in’, or trying to weasel his way out after being exposed?," said one poster, "foo" on LeBlanc's blog.
Who am I kidding?
To be clear, as a journalist, I'm not moralising over this issue, nor am I saying that the ethics of professional journalists are above criticism.
Of course journalists get freebies. Sometimes headphone companies don't pay for a courier to pick up their headphones after a review because it's not worth the cost; components manufacturers that freight components direct from Taiwan to us often don't ask for them back and let us use them for benchmarking in our labs.
We take trips to vendor conferences and product launches where flights and accommodation are paid by the vendor.
But there's two distinct aspects of this gift from Microsoft that doesn't fit into the normal criteria for judging whether a gift is legitimate or not: firstly, Microsoft doesn't make or sell laptops, and secondly, this isn't exactly a coffee mug with a logo on it; the Ferraris are worth at least $US2156. How could anyone given a gift of that size not be pretty elated and grateful to the giver?
It's also telling that the laptops were only given to bloggers. Journalists weren't approached with the offer -- perhaps because Microsoft knew that it would be too difficult to get round publishing houses' ethics policies.
So is Microsoft buying good reviews of Vista?
One thing's for sure -- people reviewing Vista on the Microsoft-supplied Acer laptop are going to have the best possible experience. Here's what they won't have to contend with that the ordinary person will:
- the process of figuring out which of the numerous Vista upgrade options is right for them
- finding up to $US399/$A751 for a copy of Vista
- installing it on their existing machine and dealing with the problems that may occur in an XP to Vista upgrade migration
- finding compatible 64-bit device drivers (the Ferraris were all shipped with Vista 64 bit and all the appropriate device drivers preinstalled)
- the deficiencies of the cheaper versions of Vista (all the Ferraris went out with Vista Ultimate)
Ask yourself: are you really getting an honest opinion of Vista if it's running on a top-of-the-line machine that has been selected by Microsoft for its Vista compatibility?
Regardless of whether the bloggers who accepted the laptops feel that their independence has been preserved, and their opinion of Microsoft unchanged, the fact is that they're going to feel pretty damn chuffed with Microsoft for such an excellent present, and they're going to have a great experience running Vista, right about the time Vista is going to be launched to the public at large.
So you tell me: is this a bribe, and is Microsoft buying good reviews?
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