Part of my THE WAY I SEE IT series, where I quick-hit a few topics per week.
This week Practical eCommerce contributor Armando Roggio brought to light a common practice by shady companies, calling out BigCommerce in the process. In his article, An Eye on BigCommerce, Roggio shone the light on the issue of misattributing publications and news agencies when it comes to including quotes in marketing materials.
Misattribution is when companies display endorsements and credit them to the wrong publication or news channel. This is often in the form of quotes and sound bytes.
In short, BigCommerce attributes specific publications and websites with promoting quotes, despite the fact the comments were often made by someone being interviewed.
Roggio raises the question of whether or not BigCommerce’s actions were a mistake or purposeful. I have no question about it at all – it’s clear they were quotes by individuals within an article.
Sadly, this site is mostly read by professionals, so the average user often sees these types of endorsements as real and encouraging.
Isn’t funny that if I’m paid to review a product or service (I’ve never done this, by the way), I need to disclose that information? Yet, there’s little publications can do in the case of misattribution than send a cease and desist.
Fair marketing? Not. And companies like BigCommerce (there are thousands of them) need to be held accountable. It’s obvious that businesses perform this practice because they’ve no real endorsements. For that, I say either build your product features and give others reasons to market for you, or close up shop. This middle ground is simply unacceptable.
