The Human Billboard

Social media is turning online personalities into advertising's next big thing: walking product placements

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Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME

Brands pay style blogger Jordan Reid to blog and tweet about using their products.

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Then there is the sea of national, regional and local conferences that marketers attend to keep pace with the millions of bloggers who are desperate to make money from promotional work. Confabs like New Media Live and TwtrCon attract thousands of bloggers with varied interests from around the country. Others go niche: the Savvy Blogging Summit is geared toward frugal deal bloggers; BlogHer Food teaches digital foodies how to style their cooking for the camera and get their recipes featured in cookbooks and on popular websites.

And yet for all the hype social media attract in the marketing world, it's unclear whether recruiting armies of citizen product placers is worth all the micromanaging. Some brands swear by the idea. "Throwing a load of cash and a product at someone doesn't work anymore," says Andy Griffiths, senior marketing manager for the denim company 7 for All Mankind. "The most influential bloggers have the integrity to wear things they really love, and the consumer can tell the difference between that and something that's manufactured." Last year Griffiths reached out to fashion blogger Aimee Song to push a jean collection for the brand during the Los Angeles leg of a seven-city promotional tour. Song created a 15-second video clip, modeling the company's white Papyrus jeans, which the company posted on its website and Song promoted on social media. The brand's Santa Monica, Calif., store sold 27 pairs in the two hours after the video went up, and within three weeks the company had sold out of the product, which is roughly four times their normal sell-out rate, Griffiths says. "We didn't have enough jeans to fill our stores, and we didn't have enough fabric to make more."

Coach has handed bloggers the creative reins to host bag-makeover sessions on YouTube, guest-edit its website, and cast, style and photograph passersby sporting its bags for art exhibits. In 2011 the company invited Emily Johnston of the blog Fashion Foie Gras to design 100 Coach bags aimed at bloggers (they had compartments for a camera and extra shoes), which, the company says, sold out almost immediately. "The exposure these projects generate is immeasurable," says Jason Weisenfeld, a Coach communications executive. Still, other companies view blogger promotions as a crutch for weak brands. "If you make great products," says Will Copenhaver, marketing director for the cast-iron-cookware company Le Creuset, "people will talk about you."

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