Sara Grace: As a long-time editor, I know first-hand that parsing the output of shills can be thirsty work! Even the vilest plonk -- now, don't take offense, MG, this is social media, after all -- can seem downright refreshing under those circumstances. ;) I guess what gets my back up a tad is the notion that the Lifestyle Correspondent contest really is a social media campaign It's a great PR stunt -- but what $10,000/month job offer wouldn't be in this economy? Certainly it involved the use of social media and viral marketing techniques in support of the contest. But will the winner bring his engaged audience from the contest campaign forward into his role at MG? Why will the audience stay engaged? To me, a social media campaign involves a long-term audience engagement strategy that benefits both the organizing entity and the audience members. Consider another kind of contest, with a different premise but the same pay rate. Say the winner were to become an itinerant nurse-practitioner caring for the uninsured or a go-anywhere hospice volunteer? Would the response -- and PR uptake -- for this contest be any less? More important, what level of audience engagement might such a campaign achieve AFTER the winner has been chosen? Imagine if audience members were accompanying these winners on their rounds though a social media experience. What might all of us learn from their experiences and the opportunity to collaborate with other audience members? Okay, I'll step off my soapbox now.

Ryck, did you follow any of the contestants blogs? Coincidentally, i read the exercise/foodie blog of one of the top 10 candidates - I heard about it there before Keith forwarded me the NY TImes article. Anyway, point is, she's got very enthusiastic fans who've been watching her drinking Murphy Good wine for three weeks. i'm a super cynic when it comes to shilling and i STILL found myself getting thirsty (or at least curious) to try to the fume blanc. So my point is, the perspective "on the inside" of the campaign is different than on the outside (if you just watched the bad publicity). How many of those impressions were the bad stuff, i don't know. But my feeling is that even with the bad errors in judgment, misunderstandings, whatever they were, the campaign has been a success for the company. What I'd like to see is their SALES figures since the campaign and upcoming. An aside - I know Keith would say, as he's told me many times, that 'bad publicity is good publicity' is bogus. Focus should always be on the long-term growth in the value of the brand - measured by the strength of the relationships/experience of everyone participating."

But were those "300,000,000 impressions" actually GOOD impressions of Murphy-Goode, the candidates, the region and the wine? Quite frankly, the wine experience hasn't yet entered into the equation -- which, in my view, ought to be the end goal of this whole MG campaign. Isn't a good impression of the wine a more appropriate metric, rather than sheer numbers? If all you want is Barnum's "no such thing as bad publicity" -- more power to them. But I don't think that's the goal of a true social media strategy which delivers long-term ROI and builds brand and customer loyalty.

They're from the press release on their web site, so take them for what they're worth. I'd be curious to know how they measured the "$7-mil" worth of publicity. Metrics for PR are so slippery.

Wow, Sara Grace, that sounds like a successful campaign for MG with those numbers! Where did you find those btw?

hello from Keith's managing editor - as keith mentioned, i'm the one who you should send ideas to if you have them! Ryck, great comment. MG made mistakes, but the IDEA of the campaign is what we want to run with. They just announced the winner, btw - Hardy Wallace. Also, from the press release (I had been curious about these numbers): "The job search is the most-publicized program in wine industry history (for a similar time period) and so far has generated over 300,000,000 impressions and more than $7-million worth of publicity for the winery, the candidates, the region and the wine."

Hmmm. Thumbs down on Murphy-Goode. This pr fizzle breaks two key rules for social media success -- trust and transparency. Trust is broken when both the participants AND the observers (audience) feel they have been used, taken advantage of or otherwise compromised by some hidden agenda or shady practice. This occurred because MG failed to be transparent about the goals and the process. As an aside, there are many ways to structure something like this with lots of participant AND audience input without risking backlash or running afoul of various contest laws -- I helped run similar events at Monster.com in the past, with good success. Without knowing all the parties involved, this sounds like a case where the PR tail was wagging the social media dog, and the result was not very pretty. Good PR should be a valuable by-product of a social media campaign -- not the goal. What social media offer is the opportunity for an entity -- a person, an idea, a brand (can you say Obama?) -- to engage a wide audience, at varying levels of intensity, in an ongoing experience of connection. The unique properties of wine, books or politicians can only be evaluated by experience. Social media can help introduce, encourage and extend that experience -- but only if all parties can establish mutual trust and transparency. If social media promoters do otherwise, it will leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Keith, I know you get this better than most. In "Never Eat Alone," your father practiced trust and transparency his whole life by asking for what he wanted. It's a great lesson.

TAGay, tell me more. Questions on how the contest was run - what kind? If I do this, i want to learn from others to get it right.

Went through something similar with trying to earning a grant for a nonprofit group I'm with, and it ended up with some questions on how the the thing was run. Some (maybe lots) of hard feelings resulted. This seems to be fad. At least I hope it is.