When Vichy was ready to bring a new anti-aging cream to market, it decided to use a blog as part of an integrated marketing program that linked the blog to advertising and PR efforts, etc. 

It was awful. 

They started with a fake character named Claire who whined about the difficulties of getting enough sleep while attending too many parties in a voice that was clearly cut, polished and contrived.

Claire, who lamented her advancing years, looked amazingly like a professionally photographed model and not like someone who should be concerned with wrinkles.

Comments were filtered. Neither RSS feed nor Permalink were enabled.  In fact, the whole thing was not really a blog at all, but a creation of the advertising agency who created it, perhaps with an eye toward incremental revenue on their own behalf. In fact, the ad agency had issued a press release, boasting about their fictitious character blog.

Before Naked Conversations goes off on a tangent however, bloggers can learn one thing from ad agencies and marketers. A simple compelling story will grab the attention of an audience more than quickly than will pontifications.  The catch is that in the blogosphere you should use only true stories unless you have masochistic tendencies. Link >>