A couple of weeks ago, I got a pitch from Coach about this thing called the Poppy Project. You can install the widget on your blog and your readers would interact with the poppies and the one whose readers interact the most wins a grand prize. Or if they spot a coach bag then you get a “gift.”
Sorry, I had to squeeze that video in somehow..if only I could be that excited! Back to the point… the prizes and gifts in the pitch were not specified, yet, a lot of bloggers, 334 blogs to be exact, have the Coach poppies on their sites. Was I missing something?
Dana Jonhson-Williams from The Art of Accessories, talks about her experience with the Poppy Project:
I joined the Coach Poppy project because I saw a few bloggers join and thought to myself, “it could be a fun way to win a Coach gift card. I’m down for games, I win on Twitter a lot, what’s the harm?” Aside from the program being a bit vague (never got a confirmation email, had to search out the fine print to see how long it would run, and didn’t really get what the secrecy behind what the prizes would be and how they’d be awarded) I thought why not.
Well, after 2 weeks of having a long string of poppies running down my left side bar I thought, “Why am I advertising for Coach for free when I’m not getting anything out of this at all?” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a few folks email me or leave a comment on a post saying they found me because of the contest, but I don’t have tons of traffic coming my way. At least not enough to justify this massively growing advertisement taking up space on my blog. I also wasn’t that enthusiastic about tweeting phrases continuously during the day to promote the project or to get people to get my poppies to get even bigger on my site. What really killed it for me was when I was on my iPad and I felt like the poppies were bursting all over and were taking away from my site. I immediately deleted it because hey, I didn’t sign a contract and I knew I was not going to come even close to winning.
This contest also made me think about IFB and the Fair Compensation Manifesto and how much I valued The Art of Accessories. I don’t make a living from my blog, but I do want to feel like I’m engaged in a project that I’m promoting and I just didn’t for the Coach Poppy Project. Perhaps something else will come along that I feel is mutually beneficial to me, but until that happens, I’ll be keeping my site to myself.
There are arguments for participating in campaigns like this. Prizes, traffic, exposure, legitimacy (even though any blog can participate in the Poppy Project, you can sign up right now by clicking here.) all of which really help a blogger get off the ground. Getting new readers is so important for bloggers at all levels, especially for the ones just beginning.
In practice, however, the campaign leaves a lot to be desired for bloggers. On some blogs the poppies actually cover the posts, many of the poppies cover the sidebars, existing badges, they’re in prominent places above the fold and they’re animated, causing readers to look at the poppies, if anything, out of reflex. The poppies also occupy prime advertising space, not to mention interactive ads are way more expensive than static ads. So what Coach is getting is advertising on 334 blogs to promote their products. Yet all they offer is a chance to win something, or a chance that one of your readers will win something. In exchange for giveaway traffic, which many bloggers report (including myself) doesn’t stick, so it’s not even particularly healthy traffic.
So how, exactly, do bloggers benefit from campaigns like the Coach Poppy Project? Maybe I am missing something.
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I’m really glad i saw this. I actually joined the poppy project late last week because it kept turning up on blogs i read often and i figured it was some huge fashion blogger secret no one would tell me. it was only after i went digging around that i realized that not only does the promotion end in about a week or two, but the chances of me or my readers winning anything was minimal at best and non-existent at worst.
i hadn’t really thought about the cons of this project until i read this and i’m glad i did. truthfully, i’ll probably keep the poppies because i think they’re pretty and right now they haven’t grown enough to obscure any of my content (i have a huge beyond ridiculous header so the poppies have occupied that space for now) but i am at least grateful that from here on out i’ll have the presence of mind to think about what my blog will be getting out of this mass promotion for a store i hadn’t even heard about before now and will probably never shop at.
great article. thanks for the insight.
I think it is brilliant on the part of Coach to do this…it is completely free advertising for them. Bloggers are getting added exposure and a chance to win something. It is nice to see corporations engaging in the blogosphere, and I would think that for the ultimate winners, and those who have won prizes along the way their pay-off is well worth the effort. For me, I find the Coach widget to be annoying. As the poppies “grow” it does seem to interfere with the overall design and readability of most sites. I hope they improve the design of future widgets. I also feel that constantly tweeting and asking others to tweet the combined hashtag at a chance to win something makes me seem deranged. I thought I would give this project a chance, but I will certainly think twice the next time I’m approached to do something like this! Thanks for your great post on the topic!
The constant “grow poppies grow” tweeting was obnoxious and I unfollowed people who did it. I didn’t even realize it was part of a contest until now!
I joined about two weeks ago, not because I am in love with the Coach brand but because I was interested to see if it was a reader generator. I thought for sure I would see the Poppy Project show up in my Google Analytics report. But in the roughly 14 days I had it on my site the project only drew 15 people to my site, with an average staying time of 33 seconds. I’d consider that a failure for me, but a major win for Coach.
Oh and one more thing… I assumed the top blogs would be the ones that were the most popular. But if you looked at the list of the top blogs that had grown the largest poppies, most of them were only a couple months old and had on average 20 followers. They must have been tweeting day and night about the project.
I think this might be a case of a good idea poorly executed. The whole poppy blog campaign’s heart was in the right place–ofering blogger’s value by giving them a theme to belong to, incentivizing them various ways… it’s all very savvy social media. But in this case it went array.
I didn’t even know about this until now and I’m so glad that I haven’t signed up knowing what I know now. Just another example of companies trying to get advertising without giving any compensation.
I am a recent blogger…started in Feb of 2010…but my belief is to stay true to yourself and blog about what you know, love and want to communicate to everyone. I am not a fan of coach, never have been, never will be. I saw this “Poppy” on a few of my fav daily blog visits, and was curious, but never thought to enter, because I am not a fan of the brand. I am thinking about taking down my google ads too? thoughts? does anyone REALLY make any money from those ads???
This is a different sort of opinion that many people dont usually talk about. Sometimes I fav stuff like this on Redit. I dont think this would be the best to submit though. Ill take a look around your site though and submit something else.
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