I hope I don't have to explain the implications of this information but I do want to say that I'm not picking on Guerilla PR because this kind of thing is much more commonplace than people realize. But it is the first time I've found a website by one of these companies that lays out so clearly the fact that people are getting paid to shill for corporations by going in and acting like everyday people.
I was thinking about doing a short piece on these guys when I ran into various references to such posts for Ashlee Simpson and traced them back to a mini-exposé on Metafilter. The post may seem confusing but when you take part of the quote from "mandyc19":
"I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks."
And put it into Google, you'll see that miss mandy was all over the place, as if she was paid to cut and paste the same phrase everywhere she could.
Now I'm not picking on Ashlee Simpson either, she has enough problems. Although I think she should take a break and start studying music more seriously and come back, not anytime soon, but when she's ready to be something similar to a real musician.
Guerilla PR? I bet they would have done a much more sophisticated job with this campaign of lies and falsehoods.
Article comments
1 - Rain
Wow...I had a feeling something like that was going on. Everytime something negative happens in Ashlee's career, articles and posts miraculously pop up all over the place in defense of her.
2 - Dawn
Can this type of technology be used in the opposite - like say for example to post negative things about products, people, celebrities?
Can you imagine if someone paid these people to write things like "Michael Jackson is boy-loving perv." all over the internet?
Oh wait, that's actually true, but you get my drift. The implications are endless.
3 - Aaman
Like Google bombing
4 - Eric Olsen
super job Clyde on a vital subject that has the potential to undermine what we all do on the Internet, although most people seem to have a good nose for what is bogus and what is real. Thanks and welcome!
5 - mrbenning
Is it just me, or does stuff like this creep anyone else out. I'm not trying to be naive, but man, is there no limit to what marketers are allowed to do anymore?
6 - Boothy
This is becoming more common, and some companies are actively looking for bloggers who want to get paid to post about their product. www.marqui.com is one example, but they don't use the same guerrila tactics, of trying to blend in and make it sound like you're not affiliated with the company. They suggest that their bloggers openly let the public know that they are being paid, and are therefore biased.
There's a debate about this on: http://themarketingbooth.blogspot.com
(it's my blog) (and i'm totally biased :)
7 - HW Saxton
I just checked in at the Ashlee Simpson
Recall Petition. It's now up to 274,520
signatures and still growing by leaps &
bounds.
8 - Clyde Smith
Thanks for the comments. I find this sort of thing creepy but fascinating and my assumption would be that it's happening all over the place and not just for commercial purposes.
The offline version has sometimes been referred to as "roach marketing", where cool people hang out in prominent positions at clubs drinking a new drink and telling everybody how great it is. As with so many aspects of contemporary society, I first heard about it in a William Gibson novel, Pattern Recognition.
I don't think the majority of Internet users have any idea about how to distinguish such things, especially since they have difficulty distinguishing paid and unpaid search results:
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3462911
But I imagine this is most effective when targeting teens using other teens or adults acting like teens, in which case it's both about the teen market and about programming youth for adulthood.
Thanks again,
Clyde
9 - mrbenning
Check out the latest comment here:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/30/154214.php
It's happening on our own site.
10 - ji mi
interesting.
but figures. i just couldn't get how some people, after all of the "mishaps," still considered her a true musician. but your article explains it.
danke schon.