Humor and Tradition in Affiliate Marketing

Let’s be honest, affiliate marketing is a distinctive community with its own personality. We meet and communicate with each other through blogs, messages boards, yahoogroups, IM, and on the phone. And we do gather in person a few times a year to compare notes on the channel. To me, these conferences are the glue that holds the community together for many since most of us work in little affiliate marketing silos at various companies where people don’t understand what we do or as publishers without the community of an office.

Ritual and tradition helps hold communities together and affiliate marketing is no different. Over the years, a traditional affiliate marketing roast has developed in the form of gag at the non-network event. I had the honor of being the topic this year at Affiliate Summit. Since the Summit has grown by leaps and bounds the tradition was new to many this year and I have received endless questions about it. I thought I might share a little of the history since, well, this is a great ritual that deserves to continue and more people should be let in on the joke.

The master of ceremonies for this ritual is Brook Schaaf, who ran Zappos, Shoes.com, and Edmunds affiliate programs, and took a sabbatical for the last year from the industry, but is back. The story begins back in 2002 which was a hard time for the affiliate marketing industry. The spyware/parasite issue had torn the community apart and people were trying to figure out what to do. There was an “infamous” Performance Marketing Summit and many players came to talk about the problem including the four big networks at the time: BeFree (since that time, BeFree was bought by ValueClick), Commission Junction, Performics and LinkShare. The net result was the Code of Conduct.

Wayne Porter stepped up to the plate to moderate the event (a thankless job), and since it was a no win situation for him, he was a bit slammed by people who really did not know him. The affiliate marketing boards were fuming at Wayne over this issue. But what’s ironic is that Wayne is one of the most popular people in affiliate marketing and everyone who meets him quickly becomes a fan.

This irony was not lost on Brook who in the summer of 2003 had “I hate Wayne Porter” t-shirts made up and everyone at the annual affiliate marketing cruise conference wore them – in fact you can get your very own at www.ihatewayneporter.com. To listen to Wayne tell the story, people who were on the boat (the conference was on the boat that year) and not part of the conference came up to him and said, “man you’re Wayne Porter, a lot of people sure do hate you.” To this day, Wayne says his children wear them.

The next year was a double header. It was Shawn Collins and Jeff Molander’s turn. Brook got us all wearing Shawn Collins hats that said “Shawn Collins is my Mom” due to the fact Shawn worked at Club Mom. Then, at dinner the next evening, Brook’s sharp wit took aim at Jeff. Brook asked the wait staff to put labels on some wine bottles that read:

The sobriquet bestowed upon this appellation is intended to invoke the bombast and ubiquity its flavor is known for. Molander’s Wine overwhelms the stomach and zonks the brain with a characteristic tang of thistle and kiss of raspberry. Like Knowledge, it is a heady thing. Drink deeply now for next year there maybe no harvest.

This joke is pretty subtle, so just think of the different ways to spell wine.

Last year, Carolyn Tang (formerly or Orbitz, but now from Share-a-Sale) organized the “I hate Jeff Molander” boxers to play off of Wayne’s shirts.

And this year, Connie Berg and Shawn Collins got me and Jeff with the Molander vs. Kirsch boxing shirts and “Team Kirsch” or “Team Molander” were written on the back. Brook and David Lewis got me after my panel. In case you have not noticed, I tend to be affiliate marketing cheerleader and Jeff thinks the industry is coming to an end. Jeff and I have crossed swords in heated debates in public on this issue and perhaps got a bit over zealous and a little personal in our views at times.

While this might seem a bit of any inside joke, the yearly tradition tends to reflect the public discourse of communinuty on the Web at the time – especially in the case of the “I hate Wayne Porter” and the Kirsch vs. Molander knockout.

I had mixed feelings at first about the gag and which I found interesting while everyone else thought it was great. My CEO, Matt Coffin, was at Affiliate Summit and walked around with me the day of the joke. I kept saying to everyone who came up to me to talk to me about it, let’s catch up later. Finally he said, I’m going to figure it out what you are hiding, sooner or later and honestly, I was a little embarrassed, but I told him. He said this is great. Then, my VP heard about it and said it’s nice to be in a tradition with Shawn Collins and Wayne Porter that helps build up a community you care about and I realized that she was right.

I have a few ideas for next time, and I think it’s time an affiliate or an network takes home the honor. Personally, I think Todd Crawford, VP of Sales of Commission Junction, needs LinkShare’s Titanium Award — LinkShare’s retired, jinxed, best affiliate award. (Apologizes to the fine people at LinkShare for dusting off this award, but you have to admit it would be funny and heck, I’m in the boxing ring with Molander and Shawn Collins has given birth to about 20 of us on a cold rainy trip on a cruise ship).

About Beth Kirsch

You can find Beth on Twitter @bethkirsch