Straits Times (19 Oct 2009): Food Bloggers face legal heat over reviews – by Serene Luo
Unhappy eatery owners could threaten to sue over negative comments

Excerpt: Undergraduate Kaelyn Ong’s review on the desserts at Obolo, an eatery in Joo Chiat, got a heated reaction when the eatery shot her a terse reply on what it thought of her comments. It told her to remove the post to “avoid further problems”, adding it would be taking legal advice to see if she had defamed the pastry café.

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Some of you would have heard of the episode between blogger Kaelyn Ong and Singapore F&B establishment Obolo, where Miss Ong (an undergraduate) was asked to remove her review of desserts served at Obolo, or possibly face legal action for defamation. (ST: 2009)

This whole issue has been blown out of proportion because some companies are unable to discern between reviews and advertorials or sponsored-reviews (whereby a company provides a blogger with a product to review, in exchange for a nice, flattering article written on the blog).

For the purpose of this discussion, let us look at the definitions of the various terms:

Review: A review is an evaluation … In addition to a critical statement, the review’s author may assign the work a rating to indicate its relative merit. (Wikipedia)

Criticism: Criticism in terms of expectations means democratic judgment over the suitability of a subject for the intended purposes, as opposed to the authoritarian command, which is meant as an absolute realization of the authority’s will, thus not open for debate. (Wikipedia)

Advertorial: An advertorial is an advertisement written in the form of an objective opinion editorial, and presented in a printed publication—usually designed to look like a legitimate and independent news story. … The tone of the advertorials is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story. … A major difference between regular editorial and advertorial is that clients usually have content approval of advertorials, a luxury usually not provided with regular editorial. (Wikipedia)

Advertorials are, like other forms of advertising, a paid placement in a publication. Miss Ong’s review of Obolo’s desserts was not paid, and therefore, is a legitimate and fair representation of her own opinion of the desserts served up to her at Obolo. Where advertorials are concerned, publications are obliged to lend a positive tonality to present the company and/or its product in a positive light. However, Miss Ong visited Obolo on her own accord and expense, like many foodies who write to share their palatal experience with readers of their blogs.

Blogging is, most definitely, a tricky business. For the blogger, a huge concern would be to not exaggerate, be it in a positive or negative manner, as Keystone Law director and lawyer Bryan Tan says in the ST article cited, stating examples of review no-nos like “This is the smallest cake in the world” or This is the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life”.

Companies, on the other hand, must realize that in this internet age, bloggers have free rein of what they publish on their blogs, and that reviews are opinions of an individual that is relative to personal preference. With the number of blogs online (Technorati indexes an approximate 133 million blogs), it has become impossible to control what is being said about any individual, company, brand, and product.

And this is the time for companies to let go of the obsessive need to put out only positive articles about themselves, because no longer do they hold the pen that writes (or the pen that signs the cheques for) articles published about them.

Obolo’s chosen course of action (to threaten the blogger with a lawsuit) was definitely not a wise idea, as bloggers will likely blog about any potential scandal involving a company that is opposed to their blog. Also, another recent revelation pointed towards negative reviews of other food establishments written by Obolo owner, on another foodie forum. Conflict of interest? Now this definitely gets interesting.

While this episode is hardly a cause for alarm, food bloggers like HisFoodBlog have raised concerns whether food establishments will band together to push for some kind of legal ruling when it comes to reviews:

I’m guessing that this is not the end of the Obolo Saga, but I do hope that they will not do any further damage to their brand and reputation, unless perhaps, their marketing strategy involves using bad publicity to increase sales.

Stay tuned for more articles on:

• How companies can manage their reputation on Social Media, instead of asking bloggers to remove negative reviews on blogs, and
• What this means for companies who engage bloggers in their marketing efforts

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Daphne Maia is a full-time Social Media Consultant at Rice Communications and Social Media enthusiast. She is also a part-time blogger who writes sporadically on several blog sites. She is currently frantically trying to remember if she has offended any company who might serve her a lawsuit for defamation, and hopes that none will result from this blog post either.