Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York & Los Angeles

Two of Three Three of Three The Transcript

KRISTEN:  Hi, Julie. Welcome to the Pierce Mattie Media Oasis where will be hosting the blogger roundtable later this evening.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Thank you so much for having me.

 

KRISTEN:  First of all, can you show us the schwag that you picked up from coming to the event?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Of course. Because, you know, I wouldn’t come if there weren’t schwag, obviously. Well, us lucky bloggers got jewelry from Fantasy Diamonds. It’s very bling, because why else would you show up to one of these events? No, but seriously.

 

Reference Link: Gawker posts altered version of our event invitation. Be sure to read the comments!

 

KRISTEN:  Please tell us about your online blogging community and what goes on at Coutorture and what it’s about and how it got started.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Sure. Coutorture Media is a blogging network of 172 different fashion, beauty, perfume, and streetwear blogs. It was initially started from some of my experiences during Fashion Week trying to coordinate blogging efforts for so many of the bloggers who were interested in covering the event inside the tents, and the frustrations involved with trying to keep everything coordinated to having coverage, and just the idea of all of us being out there. And there’s no need to duplicate effort if the designers all work together and be a community.

 

So Coutorture came out of this community spirit, the idea that bloggers all have unique voices, that we all interact together, that we’re all friends, and that we should come together to promote our interests and to present a united front to the rest of the world.

 

KRISTEN:  Currently, how does Coutorture interact with publicists?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, I think that there are different ways of interacting with publicists. I think a lot of bloggers will see a press release and have a violent reaction: “I don’t want to be PR-ed to. I’m completely neutral. I’m not interested in your information. Go away.” The second is more of hesitancy in dealing with publicists, the idea that you don’t quite know who this outside entity is. You’re not an editor. So you don’t quite understand how the industry really functions. So you approach it with some caution.

 

And I think the third is outright, “Sure, I want samples. I want information. Give me the freebies! Fantastic.” So I think that there’s differing ways of which bloggers deal with publicists.

 

KRISTEN:  Given the nature of how bloggers maintain their blogs and get their information, do they prefer to research on their own? Or do they like to have the assistance of a publicist there giving them the information and making it easy to find the price for this or where to buy or that kind of thing? Or do they like to do that kind of thing on their own?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, I personally prefer to have the assistance of a publicist because a lot of the times, the products I’m really interested in are the new products, the emerging products that aren’t always accessible in terms of research. I can’t always Google a new product. I won’t know where to get the photos. And thus, have a tendency to have a bit of information cobbled from one source, a photo taken from another source. And then there’s a lot of fear: “Well, maybe I stole the photo because I don’t know where it came from.”

 

So the idea of saying, “Alright, here’s the source of information. I want to know the price points, the attributes of the product, where I can find it, and how is it relevant to me?”

 

KRISTEN:  Why are you here today at the roundtable?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well there is a lot of fear and misunderstanding in the blogosphere towards publicists. And equally, I think there is a lot of fear of bloggers by publicists. It’s very much that we are entering a new and uncharted territory. The idea of blogging as a new medium has very much taken hold in the public consciousness, but ground rules haven’t been laid and we don’t always know what’s proper behavior or what is the etiquette. How do you deal with these kinds of media interactions? It’s not like the old editorial world in which everyone has a specific place.

 

And I think that there’s so much value to what bloggers do. They’re very authentic, very passionate about what products they choose to talk about. And their audiences know that. And having a chance to really interact with publicists so that they can get information about products and then transfer that knowledge and information on to the audiences who are very much the consumers and love products, just as the bloggers, is an incredibly wonderful opportunity. I can’t imagine a more exciting time really for publicists, because the industry is changing, and for bloggers, because now they have a chance to really get all of the information they deserve.

 

KRISTEN: It was good talking with you Julie, I’m going to turn it over to Pierce Mattie now.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Let’s talk about respect, how bloggers want to be respected today. Do they deserve respect? How can publicists work with them better in the future?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Sure. I think the real issue is that bloggers command tremendous audiences. The Coutorture network has 172 bloggers and their combined traffic is half a million impressions a day. That’s not really chump change when it comes to people interacting with blogs. So I think that, in a certain sense, the question of respect, you have to respect the numbers.

 

Now, the trouble is, is that there are unscrupulous bloggers. There are definitely bloggers who are--  to get attention, who have ulterior motives. And the real question is then how to differentiate. Who is really in it because they care about the products, they want to talk about the products, and they want their audiences to get the best information?

 

And I think the real trick there is community. If bloggers are respected members of the community, if they’re well linked to--  if people--  if they link out, they’re constantly contributing, then they have accountability to their own community members. They will have a certain respect for themselves, which will then translate out and to say, “Okay, you need to respect me because I have certain standards.”

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Is there--  Like with any journalist, there’s a level of qualifications. With blogging I think the gray areas, there’s really no level of quantifying or qualifying who is a blogger. We all know the definition of a blogger, but we don’t necessarily know what they need to do to become a blogger. So in a sense, it’s kind of a self-made taught industry. Would you, if you were to create a standard of what would qualify a legitimate blogger--

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  I think--  Blogging is just a publishing platform. And I think that’s what confuses people. It’s not anything particularly special, it’s really just a way of getting your voice out there. The problem is that anyone can do it. Of course there are no barriers to entry and anyone can start a blog.

 

And I think that what really qualifies a blogger is not that they have training or that they’re editors or that they know anything about a given subject, except that they’re really passionate. If you care, you can be a very dedicated and experienced amateur. And I think that there’s a lot of value to the amateur, because they don’t have the jaded perspective necessarily of an industry. They haven’t seen 15 products just in the last hour. They really care about what they’re working on, because either they don’t have the budget or the access, or it’s just a hobby and what they talk about is real to them and their lives. And their audiences know that.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  They can see it.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  And I think that’s what’s really key is the passion that comes through on these blogs. When you have a product you like, you really want to talk about it. You want to toot it to the high heavens: “This is a product that has done so much for my skin. I love it. It’s great. You should all try it.” And in that sense, you know, blogging has real value. And we need to sit up and respect the fact that there are passionate people and they are consumers of the product like any other. And they have a way to enable their voice, which is this publishing platform.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Okay. Circulation –  you know, everything in media gets audited with circs, whether it’s a television show or a radio station. Websites now are starting to examine how many people come to the blogs, how many people are posting on the blogs, what’s the click through rate on the blog. Tell us what’s going on right now with the blog community as far as their circs, and especially fashion and beauty.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. The interesting thing is that for a long time, it was a real taboo to asking about a blogger’s traffic. That was considered private information. Now the irony is that there’s a service run by Amazon called Alexa, which can get you data for any blogger out there. You can go out and corroborate and say, “Okay, this blog is here. This blog is there. And this blog just isn’t even registering.”

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  And what’s the website for that?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s Alexa, A-L-E-X-A dot com.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  And that’s free, or do they-- 

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s completely free.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Oh wow, okay. So every publicist should know about Alexa then.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  And the beauty is, is there’s another website called Alexaholic, which allows you to enter in as many names as you can possibly come up with. So you can get a really detailed perspective on where all the different blogs stand. But I think that what’s really important is we need to move beyond this idea of private... (inaudible). If you really want to be taken seriously, you have to say, “Alright. I have 5,000 readers a day.”

 

And the trick is, is even if you have 300 readers, it doesn’t mean that you’re not an important blog. If you were our source blog and your information diffuses out to the community and people within the blogging community respect your opinion, then your 300 readers are the right 300 readers. And that information will then be taken.

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s insane!  You know, check this out. And then everyone will say, “Hey, Julie then had this done. Should I consider this? What are the pros and cons? It’s kind of expensive.” But eyelashes are massive! And then that information diffuses out.

 

So while my personal blog may not be driving the largest amount of traffic, it has a chance for the information to flow out. So there’s the tricks of saying, “Okay, how much is your traffic? And then what is your diffusion potential?”

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  And off the top of your head, what do you think, within your community, if you can publicly say, are the top three based on how many people are actually checking out their blogs?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  The top three in terms of traffic would be FashionTribes run by Leslie Scott. Then SheFinds, which is run by Michelle Madhok. And then TheManolo. And everyone knows Manolo, and nobody knows Manolo’s real name. And they definitely drive very impressive numbers and a lot of people read them.

 

Now, not to give them any disrespect because they’re some of my favorite blogs. I read them every single day. They’re top-notch, top quality blogs, very well researched. People take it very seriously. They’re professionals hands-down. But a lot of the information that flows through them comes from some of the smaller blogs because the consummate professionals that they are, they understand where the information is coming from.

 

It’s just a trend adoption curve, and that there are the trendsetters, the early adopters, and then the mainstream. And so a few people are going to be reading and watching the trendsetters, but eventually that information will go out. And suddenly all of these people are reading and talking about it. So some of the smaller blogs without the traffic are really some of the blogs to watch.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  …at the forefront. And you would like the top two or three of the smaller blogs be(?)--   

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s so hard to say because the smaller blogs are not mass blogs. They’re more niche. So it could be someone like--  although she does drive a decent amount of traffic--  StyleBubble which is very much: “These are my fashion obsessions.” She Photoshops herself into photoshoots. It’s--  The girl’s a genius. I could never do what she does. But that information, if Suzie talks about something, the entire blogosphere will be talking about it the next day.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  And that’s called StyleBubble?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s StyleBubble.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  ... (inaudible). Okay. And what’s your second favorite for the small niche, at the forefront?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, one really good niche blog is called Knickersblog. And she only blogs--  and again, she gets somewhat decent traffic because she talks about underwear... (inaudible) subject. But she only talks about lingerie. It’s very much, you know, “These are the issues involved, the construction.” It’s her very dedicated following of people who are interested in all of the various aspects of lingerie.

 

And eventually the information will the diffuse out for people who want just one post a day about lingerie. You would then look to Denay(?) to see, “What does Knickersblog have to say?”

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  That’s very interesting. Going onto posts, there’s been a lot of discussion on who should be posting, who shouldn’t be posting. Should it be consumers only? Should it be fellow bloggers that are part of your group? Or should it be media professionals? Or do you think everyone should post?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  I think it’s difficult because in an ideal world, I would love for everyone to post. I think that we all have agendas and ulterior motives. Nobody is completely neutral. I don’t care if you think you are pure because you’re a blogger. You have motives. And I don’t think that editors or publicists should be treated any differently. We all want to interact. We’re all passionate about products. And there are different reasons that we form those passions.

 

But I think it can be very difficult. I think if you are a publicist, a blogger is not always going to respect that. And they’re going to take a little affront. They’re going to say, “Oh, you’re only saying that because you rep it. You’re getting paid.” And certainly, you know, you make a living being a publicist, but you wouldn’t have taken the client if you weren’t really passionate.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  That’s true. Or even taken the time to post about something.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. So I think the idea of saying that everybody has a place is valuable, but I think we have a long way to go because everyone can post.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Okay. And do you think that there’s a right way to--  when you do post, how you should identify yourself. Some people posts as ghosts. Some people post under an alias. And then some people fully post based on either who they are as an individual or who they are as a professional.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. That’s difficult, because you, I think always have to delineate between who you are as an individual and who you are as a professional. Because you are going to be judged through the professional guise. It’s the idea that this is what you do for a living and that’s painting your opinion.

 

So I think it’s important to say, “Hi. I’m Pierce Mattie. I want to talk about this product. I run this firm. But this ... (inaudible) talk about.” And some bloggers are just not going to be receptive. And I think that the ground rules just have not yet been set.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  How do you feel as a blogger yourself about ghost bloggers or people that just blog anonymously?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  I don’t necessarily think blogging anonymously is a bad idea. There’s some people who can’t. Stylists who are afraid they’ll get fired [audio cut-out] who are afraid that someone above them will discover them. And there have definitely been cases of high profile firings. And it’s a really scary idea, especially in an industry like fashion, which is very hierarchical and-- 

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  ... (inaudible)

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s very true, the idea that, you know, this could get out. Because it’s a small community [simultaneous conversation]--  

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right, and very competitive.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Very competitive. So the idea that being public, it’s dangerous.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  You can’t always do it.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  So if a blogger--  If a blog site owner has an anonymous blogger on there--  Like, you had mentioned Manolo. That’s very anonymous, that--  they’re respected.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well the thing is, is he is accountable. I think the trick--  The difference between anonymity and just being a blogger whose name isn’t known is that if you’re completely anonymous, you can say anything. There’s just--  No one’s going to call you on it because they can’t find you. But if you’re an anonymous blogger, then there’s this chance that you have established yourself in the community. People have linked to you. You have linked to other people. You’ve built up respect.

 

So there’s a kind of, alright, I have to respect you because you have participated. And if you do something stupid, the community will then, you know, punish you for that, say, alright, I’m not going to link to you. I’m not going to ready you anymore. Or, I’m not going to post comments because I feel your behavior is uncalled for and unjust and I don’t support that as a community member.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Okay. And speaking of  community, like, when we look at other forms of media, they usually evolve. And within ten to twenty years, we see a lot of buying on a proportion level, kind of this conglomerate. Do you foresee the blogging industry five or ten years from now being, like, picked up by Time Warner and then there’s, you know, 30 blog sites that are being run out of a huge media company, either it be CNN or even something like Condé Nast?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well it’s already happened, and it’s called Gawker. And god bless Nick Denton for pioneering it. Of course the trick then is, is--  It’s not as authentic as it used to be. And then you tend towards snarky to keep the audiences. And there’s a lot of problems in that. We all love Gawker, but it’s not always--  It’s not always the friendliest, and it’s certainly not community-oriented. Gawker is not-- 

 

[simultaneous conversation]

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right. I actually like ... (inaudible) a lot better.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, Gawker doesn’t link to anyone. But everyone links to Gawker. So that’s a little bit of trouble. I think in the future, it will be very hard to have a lot--  You will have corporate blogs, but I don’t think the blogs will be owned by corporations. Because it’s like herding cats. There are 172 different people in Coutorture with 172 different personalities and passions and interests. And if you were a streetwear blogger in Auckland, New Zealand, you don’t necessarily have the same kind of interests or even aspirations as a perfume blogger in Seattle. And it would be very difficult to try to keep all of them under one umbrella.

 

And you could certainly have a community and foster relations and help corporations then reach out to these different bloggers--  which is something that Coutorture really tries to do. We try to facilitate conversation. But you certainly couldn’t own any of these blogs.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Going on to slander. There’s some blogs that I read where I’m just shocked that they haven’t been carried off in handcuffs. Journalists in any other form of media wouldn’t get away with it, whether it’s because they don’t accept advertising or there’s just a level, kind of a public respect. And there’s a difference between a celebrity parody, which a lot of blogs play off of, and, you know, outright slander. Is anything going on in the community right now to kind of change the way blogs are, either fact-checking or think before you speak in a sense?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well because there’s been several unfortunate incidents, the idea of being very careful about expressing an opinion is very much on the forefront of bloggers’ minds, the idea that you always double-check. You fact-check. You make sure you call. Because now we have the resources.

 

Before, there wasn’t the resources necessarily to call. So there was a little bit of that mystery ... (inaudible) –“just a faceless, nameless, whatever. I can say whatever I want. I’m fighting the man,” which isn’t the case anymore. We have those resources. And if you have them, use them. Check –  always check with whoever you’re posting about if you think that it’s going to be problematic.

 

And it doesn’t mean that you can’t post things that are contentious or might be viewed in a negative light. It just means that you need to have all the facts straight first, especially if you’re going to drag other bloggers into it. A lot of bloggers aren’t interested in trying to start fires. And you can’t do that. You have to check. And then if you really believe--  And I definitely send out emails to the community saying, “This is an issue. We have to all address this. I’ve checked the facts. This is something that’s problematic.” I think that’s completely legitimate.

 

But if you’re just going to start fires, it can get out of control very quickly, and it not only hurts you as a blogger, it hurts everyone involved from the corporation that you’ve talked about, the product you’ve talked about, to all the bloggers who have been involved with you in the past.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right. Well, it’s very similar to the tabloids. Like, if In Touch Weekly is the first to break something, People, Star, all the celebrity books(?) pick up on it within hours. Like, they all have in-house lawyers. And they have a lot of lawsuits going. I mean, they get sued daily. So it’s different.

 

Let’s go on to sampling. There’s been debate that sometimes it’s okay for a blogger to take samples, and it’s not okay for an ethical blogger to take them. You feel that a blogger should always identify when they’ve been given a sample. I kind of disagree with it a little bit. I don’t think that they should identify them as a sample, but I don’t think that they should necessarily slam a product that they absolutely--  if it didn’t work for them. What do you think? What is your view on sampling? And then, what do you think the unity idea will be behind sampling?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, I think there’s a lot of valid opinions on this because of course beauty editors don’t disclose where they got the products from. And to some extent, they don’t have to, because you assume it was given to them for free because it’s their job to write about that. They’re consumer reporters. It’s their job to get the information out.

 

With bloggers, it’s not always quite the motivations. And so my personal belief has always been, “This is where I got it. This is how I got it. And this has been my experience.” And generally, if I don’t like a product, I just don’t talk about it. Because unless it’s something incredibly egregious, which then I will talk to the corporation about--  and if I don’t see a response saying, “Oh, this is a problem we’ve had. And we’re working to take these steps,” then I will definitely--  I will definitely say something. But I’ll keep it very quiet because I don’t think that there’s a lot of value to me having a negative opinion. And that if it’s something I feel consumers need to know, sure, I’m going to talk about it. But if it just didn’t work for me it could be because I have fine hair and it was a hair mask meant for people with coarser hair. Or I have dry skin and this was meant for someone with oily skin.

 

So there is definitely a  lot of different levels in that. Because not all products will work for all people. And I think that’s the beauty of beauty blogging, that you can talk about how it works for your particular skin and hair type. And people who are like you can then experience it. But if it doesn’t work for you, keep quiet on it. It’s not necessarily always in the best interest. Report that to the corporation and not necessarily to the consumer.

PIERCE MATTIE:  Do you feel that bloggers are entitled to receive samples--

 

 [simultaneous conversation]

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  No, once you have--

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  --complex where they feel that they shouldn’t have to pay for anything, and they need to get it from the ...(inaudible), and they call in for a PR firm to send it over.

 

And on that note, last week when we started coming up on a lot of the search engines, I had two new beauty blogs come up live and say, “Oh, I just heard about this new hair care product. Can you please send me some more things?” And it wasn’t like, “Just look at this, what I did.”

 

And normally, it’s kind of subconscious, like the publicist knows, oh, you wrote about my client. I’m going to give you a gift. And normally, we actually give a non-beauty gift. We usually give a piece of jewelry, or flowers(?), or chocolates, or something. But it was very much like, “This is what I did. This is my address. Please send me some stuff.”

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. Well, the thing is if bloggers have a very-- It’s a complex that evolves. And I definitely have some of it myself, of that holier than thou, I am the authentic consumer talking about my experience. Let me be righteous. And I think that has translated into entitlement. No, you should give me something because I’m going to tell the real story, and you want your product with the real story to be told.

 

That’s troubling, because I don’t think anyone’s entitled to anything. I don’t even think beauty editors are entitled to anything. If you want to research a product-- And I think this is something we’ve seen with the new Consumer Reports that have come out.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, the magazine itself.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  The magazine itself is very much-- No, it’s you don’t have these gifts given to you. And I think they are gifts. It’s a gift of saying, “Hey, I have a product. I think it’s great. I want you to have an experience with it. And if it’s positive, maybe you’ll write about it.” And I think there’s a lot of value to being completely neutral.

 

But we don’t always have that luxury. We don’t have unlimited budgets, and a lot of us talk about a lot of products very regularly. And that can get very expensive. And we are talking to our large audiences. There are people who really care, who are very passionate.

 

So, on the one hand, I think bloggers, there’s a good reason for giving them samples, because they want to talk about the products. They want to talk about as many products as they can, and enabling them in that coverage, which then benefits your clients, there’s value to that.

 

But there’s no reason to give samples to everyone all the time, and to have every last person demanding and demanding, because there’s diminishing returns. There really is. And we have to say, “Well, sometimes, that’s not your target audience.” I don’t blog often about hair products, so I shouldn’t be given hair products. If I am the hairspray blog, chances are my audience is coming to me because I care about hairspray, and that’s why I’m there.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, we at Pierce Mattie PR just started really inviting bloggers this year to come to most of our media events. And at our media events, we have print publications Hearst, Condé Nast, Fairchild. We have online publications. We have cable networks. Stylists usually come.

 

Do you see in the future more and more bloggers sitting at the tables at the beauty editor lunch events with more of the print editors? Do you see that being more of the normality, or just more part of the rare?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, I think in the end, because it’s new and everybody can do it, and there’s no barriers to entry, everybody’s jockeying for a position. Everybody wants to be the next big thing. And I think quality will out(?), and that there will be a couple of wonderful top notch bloggers who are really respected, and I think there’ll be more top notch bloggers than there are beauty editors, certainly.

 

But not everyone is going to have the interest or desire to go out and actually interact. But the really dedicated bloggers who are talented, have good audiences, and want to be more involved will come and be participants. And I don’t think it will be viewed as anything particularly novel or different. It’ll just be, these are people with audiences.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, most of the editors we’ve spoke to are very fascinated with blogging. You and I talked privately about how they really can’t post because of their jobs, but they do confess to reading blogs daily.

 

Do you see that there is a union and a bond between a beauty editor of a print publication and a beauty blogger? Or do you think that there's some-- a little bit of animosity, whether it be jealousy or jockeying for a position, like you had mentioned, or just industry rivalry?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Well, I think a lot of beauty editors are scared. Are they going to take my jobs? Are we all going to be run out of hearth and home by this new media? God, panic.

 

I think that’s-- It’s a little, you know, the sky is falling. Blogging is never going to replace old media. There is something very comforting about picking up a magazine when you go to get your toes done. You just want to sit back and read through it. And it’s a different visceral experience.

 

And blogging is not like that. Blogging is much more immediate. It’s more off the cuff. It’s more organic.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  It’s fast breaking.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  So, then there’s a lot of value to that. If you have something, there’s a new development in a product, go to a blogger first, as opposed to a long lead print publication.

 

So, there’s different audiences, different niches, different things that everyone fills. And I think in the future, beauty editors will know that, and there won’t be as much fear.

 

But right now, I think that there are definitely a lot of beauty editors who read blogs, who are interested, because bloggers often will discover a product before they do, and that bloggers are very, very much nose to the ground. They’re the real soldiers in the army of fashion.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, they also don’t have to listen to the advertisers. We hear often in the PR world that so many editors just really have to focus on the advertisers. It’s kind of obvious when you have most of the magazines, and you see something that looks like an editorial from a department store, and you just passed their ten ads. And then you get to the editorial roundup on the top ten lip glosses, and guess what? It’s all those ads that they had just had in the previous pages.

 

But I think the neat thing about a lot of these beauty blogs is you see this whole list of independent niche brands that might not get print editorial coverage.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. And what’s particularly fascinating to me is that I don’t really necessarily have a problem with-- they call it Payola in that you have certain obligations, and this is what enables the print publications to run. I think it’s kind of unfortunate, but it’s a reality we all have to live in.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right, you have to take care of who’s paying the bills.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. Your bloggers don’t have to worry about who’s paying the bills, because there’s not a lot of cost to blogging, which I think things will start to change, because people-- I can think of a magazine, and I have a basic idea of who paid for what, and how that all came about. And because of that, I don’t trust print publications as much.

 

But equally, it’s better researched. And if there are particular topics, like, if Jean Godfrey-June has advice on how to take care of a pimple, I trust that she’s the expert on that.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Versus?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Versus someone who-- Although if you’re a teenager in Kansas, maybe you have more experience with pimples than she does. You’re actually living through the experience. So, if you want a more in depth profile, sure. Maybe I need to spent 20 minutes reading up on someone’s acne history.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Right, but it’s not the authority.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Yes. There’s definitely different ways of experiencing it.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  And you had touched on cost. Just share what that’s like. If you were looking to start up ... (inaudible) fashion blog, what is that journalist online kind of expected to shell out the first year, and can you make money off of these blogs?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Yes and no. You can make money if you’re a very popular blog. But I personally don’t necessarily think it’s worth it. And you might make a couple extra hundred dollars here and there. But if you’re doing it for the money, I don’t know that you’re in it for the right reasons.

 

I definitely think that if you want to make money and you have ads, and you have Link Synergy, which is the program that allows you to click on something and then buy it, and the blogger who recommended gets a share of that sale. I think it’s great. If that’s something you want to do, I don’t think that blogging needs to be pure and you make no money off it. You’re a martyr to your blog.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, Link Synergy is kind of new.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Yes. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. I think if you want to make money, that’s fine. If you don’t, great. But you’re not necessarily going to make a lot of money, and I think a lot of people out there who are gunning to make a lot of money and get picked up, or have book deals, I think the ship has sailed.

 

If you’re really good, you were going to get discovered anyways. It’s not because you have a blog. It’s because you’re really talented, and you’re a good writer, or you’re a good photographer, and that talent will win out. And this is just a different way of showcasing that talent.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Do you foresee any new... (inaudible) media beyond blogging?

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  It’s hard to say. I think that social networking is definitely a different kind of media. And people are interacting and there are message boards. And it’s not just things like MySpace. There are definitely lots of smaller services that allow you to post products you like, that allow you to interact with products, to see different products in different ways. You can even build full outfits online. There are websites that you can go and say, “All right, I like this pair of jeans, and I like this shirt, and I like these shoes. Oh, cool, let me put it all together.”

 

So, there are lots of different ways of interacting with content. I think that they’re all different kinds of publishing platforms, whether it’s print media, or television or blogging, or these social communities. And it’s just different ways of experiencing media. And there’s no reason that we can’t have all of them, that they can’t all be successful, because we have different needs at different times.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  [audio skips] radio’s been dead for a while, and then XM satellite comes, and it kind of got a face lift.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Right. There’s always something new and different. And I think every time we have a panic attack, or say, “This is the next big thing,” yes, it will add to the scene, yes, there will be value. But you have to have a reasonable perspective in that it’s just, again, different ways of interacting with different content.

 

PIERCE MATTIE:  Well, thank you for your time today.

 

JULIE FREDRICKSON:  Thank you so much for having me.

 

END OF INTERVIEW