Filed under: Astroturfing, Fake Blogs, Flogging, Flogs, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Transparency

I wrote this a couple years ago, but it is still really relevant, especially after all the interest in Jonathan Trenn’s article, Flogging: Advertising or not - it’s wrong. Wrong or not - it’s inevitable:

Whenever you engage the Internet on behalf if a company or organization, you are acting as a brand ambassador. If someone is curious as to who you are and why you’re so passionate about an event, product, or service, the understanding is that they will pretty easily be able to find out that you’re a marketing professional.

For some, that is enough. Legally-speaking, it is enough. In terms of building a long-term relationship with your current, future, or present customers, hiding your identity as a professional marketer in the folds of your online profile may be considered deceitful.

You may be attracted to covert online marketing: special ops, black ops, spycraft – “fifth column marketing,” if you will. Don’t be.

The blowback that can result from using a false name, a false email (a Yahoo, Google, or Hotmail address created for the campaign and the false name), and a false bio, isn’t worth it.

There is a term for shooting for the short term by being opaque in your intent, no matter how effective it may be: astroturfing, which “describes formal public relations campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior.”

Accusations of astroturfing can compromise the integrity of the organization you are representing, and further put your ability to communicate future messages in danger.

Over the short term, pretending to be just another denizen of an online community or a blog works if you can pull it off. It isn’t tough to sneak in and talk, talk, talk.

Even though your reputation online is more defined by your contributions to the conversations rather than who you are, the culture of the Internet doesn’t suffer being fooled, duped, or suckered.

If you are ever found out, you are screwed.

No Comments » Posted on August 26th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Advertising, Controversial Marketing, Twitter

by Jonathan Trenn

It could have been a great marketing ploy.  It could have be fun.  Heck, it would have been a great case study to blog about.

Instead it was a completely fake.  Crap.

If you’re involved in advertising then you know about the AMC show Mad Men, which directly takes you into the fictitious Madison Avenue ad agency Sterling Cooper.  Based in 1962, it’s gives us slew of stereotyped characters that meld well together.  You can smell hte cigar smoke and cologne just watching it.

Recently its main characters began showing up on Twitter.  They’d follow you.  You’d follow them.  You could exchange tweets with them.  Yesterday I asked Betty Draper, the wife of main character and agency creative director and philanderer Don Draper:

@betty_draper Why that sad look on your face? You’re much to pretty to have   that frown. 11:42 AM August 25, 2008 from web in reply to betty_draper 

to which she replied:

betty_draper @jptrenn Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that Bobby broke something again, and it’s not even noon yet! I swear that boy has too much energy. 12:16 PM August 25, 2008 from web in reply to jptrenn 

Soon afterwards I got this from Bobbie_Barrett, a who’s as lustful as Don:
Bobbie_Barrett @jptrenn can @betty_draper really be that naive? No wonder @don_draper spends late nights at the office. 09:20 AM August 25, 2008 from web in reply to jptrenn 

So I responded to Bobbie:

@Bobbie_Barrett Betty is smiling now. Don’t know what to make of it. Perhaps Don came home early. For once. But there’s always tomorrow. about 22 hours ago from web in reply to Bobbie_Barrett 

Turns out the cast of characters popping up on Twitter aren’t from AMC or the show.  They don’t have any ties at all.  So AMC approached Twitter to have them taken down.

That sucks.  I can understand why AMC did it.  Bobbie Barrett’s profile linked to Don’t Fuck With Me Fellas.  That was a dumb thing to link to.

The blown opportunity is not from the take down.  It’s from not doing it in the first place.  AMC or whomever behind the show could have created these characters themselved, created a agency website and run with it.  There could have been some sort of notification that they were fictional, but it would have been great to play along with them.  And it would have been used as a continual promotional vehicle for the show.

It would have been great if AMC first tried, via Twitter, to locate the people behind this, vet them, and then see if it was cool to let them run with it.  Alas, lawyers.

Hopefully, we’ll see a rebirth.  Real soon.

4 Comments » Posted on August 26th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn


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