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A Look At Free Reviewer Swag
chicl3t writes "It used to be that the lagniappes that came along with hardware for review were things like USB drives — makes sense, one 128MB drive for a 100MB presentation. But...iPod nanos? As in more than one? That's another story entirely. It's damn nice swag, of course, but at what point is it too much? A DailyTech writer talks about his experiences with swag."
As I write this on my beautiful Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa 2.4ghz with an ultrafast 4 GB of Corsair Memory and my always trustworthy Western Digital MyBook Pro 1TB World Edition backup. This marketing madness must stop.
Does anyone actually bother reading those reviews? I sure don't. They usually tend to say nothing but positives about the products being reviewed, especially when the reviewer got them from the manufacturer free-of-charge. Of course, that's to be expected, since they want to get more such free products (which I don't doubt they use for themselves afterwards, until they fall apart a week or so later).
The only reputable source I've found for reviews is Consumer Reports. Other than that, the pickings are slim.
First I hear of the terms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagniappe and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swag.
On another note, isn't this comparable to the free gifts that pharmacutical companies give doctors on their conferences. It is just that this doesn't have the obvious connection to peoples health and well being and perhaps is a bit smaller in scope. A bit far fetched perhaps but the same principle or what?
And some Slashdot militants complain that critical thinking isn't taught in the US school system (or White House press conferences)!
This is a fine example of critical thinking being rewarded. In their heart of hearts, Corporations only want people to understand the benefits of their products. And writers... well we all know how hard it is to grind out paragraphs for which someone wants to pay. If writers have to EBay their lagniappes for food and rent money, are you going to oppress them with your sanctimonious principles, you cruel prescriptive bastards?
Besides, the reviewers are not receiving bribes. They are lagniappes. If I were a politician, I would be open to receiving lagniappes. It sounds like something you get at a fine soirée, like canapés and other words with French accents in them.
Message texted from pew #7 in my church using a Blackberry from a review I did earlier this year.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Please email me for my latest free service "Swag Removal". I will provide you with an address that you can ship all of your unwanted swag valued at over $20. I will then make sure that swag is "properly handled" to provide you with an ethical solution to the problem at no cost to you other than shipping.
"Lagniappes" is a word I've not come across before. For anyone else who couldn't figure out the meaning via context, or who's looking for a proper definition:
lagniappe (lan yap)
noun
something given as a bonus or extra gift.
ORIGIN Louisiana French, from Spanish la ñapa.
Ack!
I think your sig said it ;)
When I was more active in the Xbox scene I would receive hardware (modchips) to review. Never sent any of them back, but usually that's because they didn't work so well when I was done with them. Only had one vendor ask for it back, specifically to do Failure Analysis. They asked if I wanted a replacement and I turned them down. To be fair though I first tested the things as a normal user would use them, then as an extreme modder may use them, then as an idiot would use them (plugged in backwards). That usually did them in (though one did my box in instead...). I suppose plugging in an SLI PCIe backwards would be difficult.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
> It's damn nice swag, of course, but at what point is it too much? A DailyTech writer
> talks about his experiences with swag.
If you are a reviewer nothing is too much. If you are a consumer anything at all is a bribe.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm a reviewer for a UK-based PC magazine, and I have to say, though companies do tend to give out freebies at press events, I've never been given anything remotely as interesting as an iPod. Normally it's a USB thumb-drive and a branded pen or two. For major launches you might get a rucksack.
But be that as it may, surely giving out gifts of any size is only a problem if it actually influences reviewers. And on that count I see no grounds for concern at all. I think anyone who works in this industry quickly develops a healthily cynical regard for manufacturers, and if we feel like a company's being unusually nice to us our immediate instinct is to wonder why, and to look at their product with extra suspicion. The magazine market's just too competitive for reviewers to get away with endorsing lousy products: readers aren't stupid, and I think most of us love our jobs far too much to sell out our reputations for a few hundred pounds' worth of free stuff.
(That's how it seems to be with print journalism, anyway. Web reviewers... well, I can't speak for them.)
I think that's a bigger form of swag - actual money, disguised as an indirect business deal.
I'll bet the people in charge of certain magazines or blogs have enormous incentive to put the products of their sponsor companies in a positive light - or at least in a non-negative light.
At the same time you have to wonder if they'll spin the product of a competitor to their sponsor's product in a negative light.
For instance, I remember back in the day, Microsoft products would get reviewed much more favourably than WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 or any other competitor based on subjective criteria such as "ease-of-use". Of course, Microsoft was the heaviest advertiser in magazines such as PC Magazine, and you wonder if their executives talked and made an agreement of money for good reviews.
At CNet, many of their reviewers have written books about Microsoft products, gathering information from people close to Microsoft - how they can maintain an unbiased opinion on any review with a Microsoft gadget is beyond me.
There are many blogs where the PS3 gets bashed over anything, from calling it a George Foreman grill, to bashing Sony's "evilness", to it's lack of backwards compatibility to it's price. However, the XBox 360, a product by Microsoft, doesn't get bashed nearly as much over it's failure rate, Microsoft's "evilness", overcharging for non-standard components and online play, it's non-backwards compatibility, and so on... - not surprisingly, Microsoft does a lot more advertising on these sites than Sony.
My point is, bribes go much further in the tech review/news industry than swag...
I see it every year in the Jeep reviews, they get dinged for the rough ride. But they should. I've never understood why people criticize Consumer Reports for doing what they're supposed to be doing -- criticizing things from the point of view of an average American suburban family and then spelling out the reasons why things do well or poorly in a review, so that you can decide if those reasons are important to you.
I've owned a Jeep Wrangler for a decade, and certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone with 2 kids as a replacement for their Honda Accord. It DOES have a rough ride, it lacks amenities, it has no storage space, etc etc. If you don't really want a convertible 4x4 that it easy to tinker with, there's no reason to buy one. Yet every year Jeep groups get up in arms over Consumer Reports giving it a low score because it has a lot of negatives that Jeep owners tend not to care about.
If you're buying a sports car, you might not care about trunk space or back seat leg room, but that doesn't mean Consumer Reports should just ignore those factors in their review. if you want a review from the point of view of a sports car writer, buy a sports car magazine.
Consumer reports does a great job, I think the people who complain about it just don't understand what job Consumer Reports is doing.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.