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This openness and confidence has created trust, credibility and affinity. He has
also shown that he is fully independent and not affiliated with any wine com-
pany, chateau or domain - a crucial factor in the blogophere.
As a blog that is apparently independent of any interest groups, Dr Vino has also
received a higher score among its public. Dr Vino confirms some crucial charac-
teristics of blogs, bloggers and bloggees, which will serve luxury brands well as
the reflection on whether luxury brands should create blogs or not continues.
What should luxury brands be doing about blogs?
In 2005, when both the blogging frenzy and its associated confusion were
at a peak, several luxury brands were raising questions of the suitability of
creating corporate blogs or seemingly independent blogs manned by the
employees of luxury companies. Vichy, the French skincare brand, opted for
an independent blog although this was a guise, as the blog was actually man-
aged by the company's marketing team and their advertising agency. The
blog was intended to promote a new anti-wrinkle cream and featured Claire,
a young Parisian party-girl (who in reality was a fictitious character) who
made regular entries on the improvement of her skin since she began using
the product. She constantly whined of her lack of sleep due to too many
soirées, her advancing age and the loss of firmness of her skin until she dis-
covered the Vichy “magic” product.
The blog initially attracted high interest and as much as 12,000 views per
page. This changed however when readers and other bloggers became suspi-
cious of Claire's glowing posts and endless praise for Vichy and its new prod-
uct. In addition, the set-up of the blog, the overtly polished language and the
fact that so little was known about Claire, apart from the fact that she looked
like a supermodel, didn't help matters. Blog readers began to send comments
on Claire's postings that reflected their suspicions and to their dismay dis-
covered that their comments were filtered and some of them weren't pub-
lished. In no time, the website was inundated with postings from angry and
suspicious readers reproaching the brand for not allowing real women to test
the product if it were that fantastic. At the same time, snooping bloggers dis-
covered the real story, which is that Vichy and their advertising agency had
contrived the fake Claire as a way of extending the marketing communica-
tions strategy for the new product.
Bloggers were furious, clients were stunned at the blatant deceit and the
business press had a field day, using Vichy as the scapegoat and case study
for “what not to do in the digital marketing world”. The brand received much
bashing from all parties for lying, misleading and manipulating the public
and there was a call to boycott both the blog and the brand. Vichy had to
eat humble pie by apologizing to the blogosphere and the public but blog-
gers were not having it. They demanded that the culprits behind this scheme
