How to piss off your friends (but influence people)

So called Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing is coming to the UK with the launch of BzzAgent's UK operation.

The idea is that you sign up with them as an "agent". Their clients (various faceless megacorporations, such as AOL) then send you free samples of stuff, which you "discuss" with your friends and feedback to Bzz via Bzz's website. Bzz then passes this information on to the aforementioned megacorporations (nice companies, not, for example, rain forest killers, investors in Burma, purveyors of manacles and torture equipment, etc), who pay fat fees for the opinions of the ordinary thicko on the street.

I'm entirely uncomfortable with this idea. Bzz says its code of conduct means you have to tell your friends that you are working for Bzz before "buzzing" about a product. That seems totally irrelevant to me. Whether you know your chum is taking notes on your responses to various midmarket consumables seems neither here nor there. It's not like you wouldn't guess their involvement when you turn up at the pub and your (ex-) buddy starts waxing lyrical about Ladyshave, Nescafe and other shite products. (Philips and Nestle are both clients of Bzz in the US.) No, you would guess, then you would immediately walk out of the pub.

I beg everyone I know not to sign up for this. I'd much prefer to bitch about other people we know, rather than the pluses and minuses of unexceptional consumer "brands".