That’s not us. It’s those really nasty marketers over at McDonald’s who afronted the Blogsphere by creating a fake blog. How dare they undertake a marketing stunt on this hallowed ground! How dare they extend their brand into our space in such a juvenile way! Out damned fake blog! Out!

Ok, so I’m exaggerating a little. But not much. If Brandshift does nothing else than explore the intersection of branding and the Blogsphere it will have served a very useful purpose. That marketers look to extend their brands through the Blogsphere is inevitable. That they don’t quite get the spirit of this place and challenge it’s boundaries is equally inevitable.

The many comments my blog drew earlier last week seemed to echo this. Jeremy made an interesting and unreported observation:

It was inevitable that there would be - and have been - fake blogs. But, the bigger picture is so what? Is this really going to affect our lives that drastically? McDonald’s is auctioning off the fake fry, and raising funds for the Ronald McDonald’s House Charities - that's what matters at the end of the day.

The trick is going to be seeing blogs in the light they were intended to be seen in. They might be juvenile. They might be pathetic. But we’re an equally diverse and weird bunch. All eight million plus of us.

If I were to offer a critique - strictly from an execution perspective - it would be on two fronts:

First - brands can’t just be about awareness. This is Kevin’s point:

...the fake blog shows a complete misunderstanding of the medium. The technology is designed to create an open, honest dialogue with customers. Fake blogs say "we just want awareness. We just want control over the medium. This is how we do it. By throwing money at a fake blog.”

Second - all great brands are close to transparent. The negative noise could have been easily avoided by McDonald’s simply stating that this was a fun blog written by fictional characters all in the name of profit and good. Lesson here - don’t inflame the Blogsphere by making these kind of obvious mistakes.

This new medium - these new communities and conversations - are set to reshape branding. Brand marketers have been stuck on transmit for decades. The smart ones who looked to have the very act of marketing become a conversation were quickly isolated as guerilla or viral marketers. The Blogsphere changes that. Use it to simply transmit, or purely for stunts, and you miss its enormous potential.

Brand marketing. Branding. Lovemarks. Call it what you will. All flavors have made a sharp shift back into community building and conversations.

So, while I did think McDonald’s fake blog was kind of silly, I did think it was silly funny. But I do wonder how much more McDonald’s could have gained by being transparent and even explaining the cause. They might have got to have fun while mobilizing support for their Brand like never before.

And here’s an open invitation to anyone from McDonalds reading this. Give us your thoughts. This is a conversation as well. And I’m lovin it.