Astroturfing Like It’s 1999
Wow, what a difference a day makes. I felt bad after I stalked out of the blogosphere yesterday, but the real-world subsequently got very interesting. Among other signal events (that I’ll hopefully be able to reveal soon), I also talked for a solid hour with a Wall Street Journal reporter about “marketing in the social media era.”
In the course of the WSJ chat, the subject of the Comotion Group’s scandalous TechCrunch post came up. The scandal came from Dan Ackerman Greenberg’s admission of some “clandestine marketing” tactics on YouTube:
Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this)…
Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”
Ugh. Sound familiar? FWIW, a lot of Greenberg’s OTHER suggestions in the TechCrunch post were pretty darned good (and ethical). Anyway, it’s been widely covered. But, here’s what got me scratching my head: when the WSJ reporter asked me…
How were the tactics described by The Comotion Group all that different from the tactics used by The Blair Witch Project producers, in 1999? Didn’t that campaign generate a lot of positive buzz, ostensibly by duping people online about a fake mystery?”
We agreed that nowadays, the vast number of interconnected online sleuthers would quickly ferret-out the truth about a Blair Witch-style campaign.
But the question remains: if someone was clever enough to pull off the same type of stunt, would we applaud as we did back in 1999? Or would we hiss at the lack of authenticity?
My take: most folks don’t mind going along with a joke; they’ll participate in online scavenger hunts, for example, even if they know they’ll be purposely misdirected at times. But no one likes to play the fool, especially as our time seems to grow ever more precious.
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Thanks for bringing this issue to my attention via Twitter, friend. I really value your tweets.
I am opposed to gaming any system, it means your product or work has no intrinsic value that can create a genuine word of mouth campaign, spontaneously generated by satisfied and enthusiastic fans.
Multiple accounts and fake comments in a contrived and insincere “blogocombat battle” is a weak way to drive traffic to a video on YouTube or an ecommerce site.
I could enter fake comments in my blogs all day long, using fake names and legit URLs, but just doing so would prove that I’m desperate, vain, dishonest, pathetic, and not skillful at promoting my blogs in an authentic manner.
http://twitter.com/vaspers
The thing is, the campaign for the Blair Witch movie was completely unique to 1999. The Internet was only a few years old, and no one had even thought to pull anything like that. That’s what made it so great. If someone pulled something like that again, I think the transparency issue would be secondary to the “Yawn…it’s been done.” issue. It’s the originality that’s important, I don’t mind being tricked as long as it’s really, really clever.
That being said, I thought the BWP was the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen, and was probably the only college student in America at the time who left the theater going “Um, that wasn’t scary–can we get our money back?”
Thank You!!! For not allowing stupid cowardly anonymous posts on your blog.
I’ve been trying to get TechCrunch and other blogs to disallow these trolls from posting their unaccountable abuse.
I know nothing about Blair Witch Project. But Lonelygirl15 is an example of tricking people into visiting a video, and I think it is con artist BS.
Hey Todd:
Glad to hear you are plugged in again
I hadn’t thought about the Blair Witch Project. I think there is a key difference between the marketing used for BWP and the techniques used by the commotion group: The marketing lead up to BWP’s launch created an alternate reality that actually added to the movie going experience. These weren’t frivolous fake pages, they were part of the art/craft of the movie makers.It’s not too far from what the LonelyGirl people tried to attempt with that series and have really evolved in KateModern’s use of social networking to enhance the entertainment aspect.
The Commotion Group, on the other hand, isn’t adding to an experience; they are using the tools to create a fake sense of “social proof” behind their campaigns. It reminds me of a laugh track on a TV show and that’s why we hiss.
We discuss this constantly in our firm. Where is the line? Personally, I didn’t think the Blair Witch stunt was all that clever except for the fact that college kids came up with it. The source of the gag was what made it somewhat interesting. Otherwise, I thought it was a boring movie, poorly done. I think the same standards would probably still apply, for me.
I think that a lot of this is being done in the name of being “creative,” which I think is NOT an acceptable reason for being dishonest.
I, like you, felt that the Comotion post on TechCrunch held a lot of great (and ethical) ideas.
I think the problem is that clients and providers don’t want to do the work ahead of time (or spend the money) to have a network of real people that want to consume these entertaining videos. If they had a network, they wouldn’t have to kick off the conversation themselves, their community would do it.
So many are still looking for the shortcut in the name of creativity.
At the time of BWP, my best friend was a college intern working the junkits for this movie. While it was clever and creative approach, we saw a lot of scared people who did not see the humor. The theatre had extra security and there was a public announcement before each movie leading to drama without good outcome. Of course, we laugh about it now.
How is Blair Witch different from lonelygirl15? Or rather, how is it the same? If the purpose is to entertain, and the payoff is good (a matter of opinion, sure), you could probably do it.
But you had better be right. I thought the lonelygirl15 thing was well played, I don;t know that everyone agrees. But like BWP, it was a series of fictional vignettes presented as documentary until it was time to unveil.
Now, if lonelygirl15 had gotten a bigger project to unveil at the right moment, it would have been really cool
My position is that Lonelygirl15 manipulated the emotions of the younger girls who got caught up in it.
I think hoaxes can be fun, and non-harmful. But we do need to analyze and ponder and draw lines. If we wish to be ethical, ie, powerful. For ill gotten gain just curses the con artists and charlatans.
I recall video responses from gals who said they prayed and wept and felt devastated by the fictitious LG15 events, and when the hoax was exposed, they felt betrayed.
Do you wish to risk being perceived as a manipulator, gamer, exploiter?
My personal perspective on this is that people are okay with hoaxes/reveals when they enter into the situation with an understanding that it’s entertainment. I love films with twists at the end…”The Usual Suspects” is one of my all-time favorites.
The difference between BWP and LonelyGirl is that with BWP, going to a movie there is an expectation of entertainment. People got emotionally involved with LonelyGirl. When revealed it was entertainment, the empathy people felt for the young girl evaporated. It might seem like too fine a distinction, but I think there is some difference.