This is what you get when you apply “paid media” thinking to building relationships with bloggers:

Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their “opportunity,” specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they’ll pay only for positive mentions.

…

It’s better for a brand to get into a blog than to surround it as a banner or text ad, says Murphy.

(From BusinessWeek: Polluting the Blogosphere)

This is stupid in a number of ways:

1. It will make your customers disappointed. They’ll expect a great product but will receive something mediocre that wasn’t able to get a positive buzz by itself.
2. You’ll target the wrong blogs. The high-credibility blogs about your kind of product wouldn’t touch this for fear of losing their readers. Your product will end up being mentioned on smaller blogs without a specific focus. It will be search engine fodder at best.
3. Bloggers will talk bad about your products “off the record”; telling their friend the only reason they wrote positively about your product was to earn $5.

Your positive word-of-mouth will end up being negative word-of-mouth in the places where it matters; where friends talk to friends.

Now, did I say this was stupid?