With the large amount of attention being put on the two biggest blog advertising companies, we’ve taken a step back on social media since most people are either busy with the holiday season or with reading about the dispute. Some might even be turned off by adverts at this point of time? You might only understand the below if you have read about the dispute, which we believe majority would have.

Although Vivre does not work with either one of the companies (their prices are catered to big players in the market), we, like many other smaller e-commerce stores, hired their bloggers via direct advertising. That is why we got approached by some asking if our ads are credible and if we did go through GC. We wish we could go through GC, but we do not have the budget.

Do you mask ads?

We do advise our bloggers to not write it like an “advertisement”. There is nothing wrong with it (tonnes of magazines and newspaper uses this method, but perhaps they masked it so well, many doesn’t even notice).

However, what’s important is we do not ask someone to write an advert for us without sending them any apparels for test. The only one time we did was the below whereby we provided her the flatlay to share, and the blogger was told to mention “can’t wait for my new sportswear to arrive.”

After which, the second IG post followed up when she received our parcel.

If bloggers wish to hashtag #adverts or title it as advert, we will respect that. But we, as advertisers definitely do not like it. If I flip through a magazine and every page states “Advertisement”, I wouldn’t even bother to read the contents. Nobody like reading ads, it has to incorporate some other info that interest/benefit you.

Review writing, on another hand, are free to pen down any pros and cons according to their own judgement. Nowadays, very little bloggers will go into reviewing products – firstly, they have to ask or buy the product (which they will not have to if its an advert), secondly, they will not get paid for reviews, lastly, if they speak badly about any products, they will lose potential clients who might hire them? This is just my own analysis.

Another note, Vivre does not give standard copy-paste texts to bloggers, flexibility is given to them unless they require write-ups from us.

Funnily, I have some friends who does not understand my definition of non-advert like writing, so below are the examples.

Examples

Advert-like writing:

http://ohsofickle.blogspot.sg/2014/12/shopsassydream.html

Non Advert-like writing:

http://collettemiles.blogspot.sg/2014/12/what-you-should-know-before-your-first.html

Review writing:

http://www.shape.com.sg/affordable-stylish-yoga-wear

Statistics Disputes

About statistics of bloggers, we’re not in the position to comment much, but personally feel that advertisers have to do their own homework and not take stats for granted. I am terribly bad with numbers, so instead, I follow the activities of the bloggers for some time before deciding to commit.

A blogger with 100k followers does not necessary bring us more results from engaging a blogger with 20k followers. We decide our engagement with bloggers not only based on their followers, but several other factors such as their type of readers, engagement level, type of content their readers like etc. And of course, their work ethics. Below is quoted from Tammy Tay’s blog:

“But ok la, bloggers can learn another thing from this. If you want to charge people for placing ads on your blog, try your very best to maintain your numbers and not let your blog go too dead for too long. As a blogger, it is our responsibility to keep the blog alive. If we can’t do it, then we don’t deserve to make money from it.”

The blogging industry is over-flooded with bloggers who are out to get sponsored and paid. I really appreciate bloggers who still care to share personal stories or products whom they chanced upon and find it good (even if they are not paid a single cent). If you did not start off with the passion to share info selflessly, you are just an advertising platform (like commercial break in between tv programmes), not a blogger.

Our stand for Yilin

 As for Yilin, she did made a mistake by accepting that particular ad, but our take is that she might have trusted GC in passing only jobs that are from reliable companies to her. Perhaps she just doesn’t want to be difficult by questioning too much? Unless you are someone who had rejected the same ad, I don’t think anyone is in the position to judge her. Speaking a little for her because she was one of the humble and nice ladies who helped us out in adverts and campaigns out of good will, without requesting to be paid.

That’s about it!

Was just here to give a comparison of advert types – how some advertisers like to “mask” each ad to make it slightly more interesting, but stirred off a little more.

Last question which some might ask; can you do without adverts if your products are so good? Of course not, word of mouth does not go fast enough for us to sustain a business like ours. I’m sure many of you heard of us through bloggers, and hope you are still pretty satisfied with the products and service we provide thus far. (:

Signing off,

Sylvia, Vivre Active Wear