Wednesday, January 13, 2016

My integrity is not for sale, I'm giving it away

The other week, Dewars asked me if they could send three bottles of their new-to-the-US single malts for me to review on my channels. "Certainly," I replied instantly. Only later did I face the nagging question raised by accepting their proposition:

I have channels?

Some people say taking free samples compromises a blogger's integrity and makes the reviews worthless. In my case, at least, that's not true. All my reviews are worthless. And I'd never write that a free whiskey is better than I think it is just to get more free whiskey. That would only work if marketers read my blog. But if they did that, they'd surely move on to a blogger who hadn't peaked ("hillocked" may be more accurate) with his 2012 hotel room review of Old Thompson Brand American Whiskey. Checkmate, integrity questioners!
This blog's all-time pageview champion. (Yes, the scale is pageviews per month. Yes, that includes Russian spiderbots.)

I got as far as the above with this post after two of the three bottles arrived. That evening, I mentioned to my 18-year-old son that I expected yet another bottle to arrive the next day. He asked, "Who is sending you all this whiskey?"
"Dewars."
"What's a doer?"
A reasonable question under the circumstances. After I answered, he asked the question I'd been asking myself: "Why are they sending it to you?"
"I guess so I'll mention it."
"You should! Then you'll get more free stuff!"
He went on to say that I shouldn't be too obvious, but subtle, like, "You might want to give this a try sometime."
The boy's got the angles worked out already.

1 comment:

  1. Haha, this made me chuckle. I am yet to be sent anything for free.

    ReplyDelete