posted
This is an email sent to the guys at Penny Arcade in response to a recent strip.
quote: Hey guys,
I interviewed for a guerilla marketing business in San Francisco that targeted web forums.
I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.
They had 12 people working there full time, and were hiring 10 more. You do the math. No wait, I'll do it for you: that's 880 posts a day (if minimum was met). However he said the better ones could do around 8 or 10 an hour. And they had different "verticals" so there was the sports guy, and the games guy, the hentai, excuse me I mean anime guy, etc.
But the most critical point was this: develop and integrate the identity. No random "HEY EB GAMES IS AWESOME BUY THIS" stuff.
Kinda spooky.
Didn't take the job. It was a ****ing mill.
So what do you all think about that? While the idea itself seems kinda sleazy, I have to admit that there'd be a lot worse jobs than posting on forums all day. Anybody on a payroll right now?
posted
I saw that and it bothers me some. I mean planting people on these boards just to build up hype for your crappy game. Makes me glad though that I don't typically trust others' opinions on games and I make my own.
Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Why don't they just recruit long time members of forums, preferably with lucrative packages of free products and slush funds?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
On the one hand, I don't really care, since it's just video games and I'm always happy to see someone get employed.
On the other hand, I am terrified of the possibility of this method extending to things that could adversely affect people's lives, like medication or insurance.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I don't necessarily see how this is much different from other types of marketing. It's dishonest and more than a little disgusting, but if marketing people had any sense of shame, morality, or responsibility, they wouldn't be marketing people.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I don't necessarily see how this is much different from other types of marketing. It's dishonest and more than a little disgusting, but if marketing people had any sense of shame, morality, or responsibility, they wouldn't be marketing people.
I think the difference is that while we can sneer, laugh at or ignore most existing marketing schemes, we (or at least I) can see this one working very, very, very well.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
When they are first introduced, most marketing schemes work very well. For example, celebrity endorsements were scrazy successful. Then, everyone did it. Most marketing techniqes aren't unsucessful because people see through them so much as the channel gets oversaturated.
The same thing will happen here. If this is a sucessful technique, a bunch of other people will do it too and the internet will be even more awash with shills than it is now.
It's like a locust infestation. The forerunners move in, are successful for a little while and then the others follow and just make things really annoying and destroy people's trust in whatever they were using to trick them with. Then they move on to another channel.
---
(Just in case people haven't noticed, I don't really like marketing that much. Or rather, I see it as a nearly unmitigated evil blight on our society and think that, if we can't imprision those who participate in it, at least we should treat them like the moral lepers they are.)
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Confession: I've been planted here by the Cholent Marketing Board. Cholent: It's What's for Shabbos!Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Plants have been in existance a long time. I remember hearing in music history how some composer would plant people in the audience to applause at the right time, etc. Some of the more interesting plants included people who caused controversial outbursts so that it insured the performance hit the front page so the next day everyone would go see it.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
So, how can we tell them? The car thread may be full of them.
And how can we collect for touting products we like? Mountain Dew sure owes peek-a-boo a bunch of royalties, I know that. And CT should collect from Alton Brown, Dr. Bonner's soaps, and definitely that Leonard Cohen dude. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Now that I think of it, isn't there someone on this forum (and I'm not sure I remember who) who keeps planting this little image in random threads?
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I think Tante is best suited for the job. If she spread her posts over 100, maybe 200 forums, she could easily create an entrenched poster or seven and be considered a regular by next week.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Son of Shevester is no doubt just an alt, designed to give the character that is Tante verisimilitude (and a mouthpiece by which to speak to a younger Hatrack demographic).
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Maybe I should get my husband to try this. He spends nearly every waking hour online anyway, and doesn't currently have a job. Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I dunno about the rest of you, but this idea really disturbs me. I think if anyone I spoke to on a web forum turned out to be a plant I'd end up feeling extremely betrayed. I've grown basically with computers and online. And I consider online friends with just about the same care I do RL friends. Finding out one of them was a plant from some company... I'd be pissed. I'd feel kinda inclined to hunt them down and shut down the company... its lying, litterally. Its false advertising in more than one sense. And its bullshit. It really ought to be illegal.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Alcon, I hear you. Have you every gotten a call or note IRL from an old friend, and have it turn out that there's some multilevel marketing scheme they want to recruit you into, or some other commerical reason for the call? It's pretty sad. I'm soooo glad I don't have to do that for a living, to try to ply friendships into commerce.
I think it will be fairly obvious online, actually, and not that hard to spot, just as it is in real life. Honorable people would state up front if they were being paid to promote something, of course. Though I doubt that is what the marketing companies have in mind.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Not that hard to spot is relative, ak. For example, Steven Milloy was a fake journalist/paid shill for Phillip Morris and Exxon (among other payees) for years before he was exposed.
Such paid advocates can do enormous damage while pretending to be independant.
posted
Incidentally, the historical plants human was talking about were likely members of a claque, which I've always found a really interesting phenomenom, especially when talking about all the unitended consequences that grew out of this practice.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Well, now I'm compelled to analyze the effectiveness of the various "food plants" that have been outed here. KQ, I'm sorry but I have used no more than my normal amount of ketchup, despite at least one smiting, and whether it's Heinz or not entirely depends upon what I bought before I started Hatracking. (probably an admission that will bring the Dept. of Health over to eye the expiration dates in my fridge.) I have tasted not one drop of Mountain Dew despite reading far more of the "dude: cool" thread than I'm sure is mentally healthy. Tante S, however, did come perilously close to influencing me with her cholent campaign, to the point of my interrogating various friends about why they never mentioned this culinary tradition to me. Luckily, my basically lazy nature took over so I haven't tried to make it yet, thus narrowly avoiding betrayal.
Seriously, though, I do remember watching a 60 Minutes or something showing a similar marketing ploy for electronic devices. People got paid to go sit in an e-cafe with some cool new laptop or other gizmo and wait for people to come and ask questions about it.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
It started out as some guy paying some people to applaud at his performances and developed into a whole industry.
One of the consequences I thought was intereating sort of paralelled the Vedantic shift (I think that's what it's called, but darn if I can remember), where the Vedic priests realized that if the gods always answered their rituals, they actually controlled the gods. The claques, over time, organized and became a force unto themselves in the theater world. So, for example, the went around extorting artists. If you didn't pay them, they'd buy up the same number of seats, but boo and otherwise disrupt your performance. Also, there was some study put into elevating the effect of your claque over that of others, so they actually pioneered some of the research on emotional influencing crowds and general emotional aesthetics. Claques would specialize in enhancing certain types of performances, say one group would do comedies, another tradgedies, another musical performance, etc.
They also expanded beyond the bounds of the theater, and claques were hired to attend political rallies and the like.
I've never really read or seen anything on this, but I imagine that as their presence became routine, it added interesting complexity and a certain disillusionment to the theater experience, which I've always thought would be an interesting thing to track.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Have you every gotten a call or note IRL from an old friend, and have it turn out that there's some multilevel marketing scheme they want to recruit you into, or some other commerical reason for the call? It's pretty sad. I'm soooo glad I don't have to do that for a living, to try to ply friendships into commerce.
Yeah, a couple of those within the past year, actually. Although both took the form of IMs rather than phone calls, for which I'm grateful. In one case, I think it pretty much ended the friendship because I really want to avoid the guy now. He was totally pushy and I finally had to be a bit snotty to get rid of him. I'm afraid that I'll have a hard time trusting his motives in the future anytime he says or does something in the name of friendship.
quote:Uprooted, isn't KQ always pushing some kind of oil she claims is healthier than olive oil, also?
(I wonder if Heinz makes that as well.)
No, Heinz doesn't make that-- I buy a Greek brand at the Armenian store, it's cheaper. And it is better for you than olive oil-- higher flash point, and a more neutral taste, too. And it's good for your skin and, um, other things, too. *looks evasive*
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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