Avoid Cyber Burns; Don't Astroturf
In the Old Days of advertising (I'm not even going to use the word branding, because nobody used that word back in the Old Days), everyone knew what "bait and switch" and "false advertising" meant. Good companies did not advertise one thing and then sell another. Respected businesses did not pretend that their product was one thing when it actually was something else. But before the Old Days, back in the Really Old Days, it was one of the Ten Commandments - Thou Shalt Not Lie.
These days, there's a wonderful term bandied about on the net with ever more frequency to cover what Thou Shalt Not Do - astroturfing. Wikipedia says it's "a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising that seek to create the impression of being spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the artificial grass AstroTurf."
These days, there's a wonderful term bandied about on the net with ever more frequency to cover what Thou Shalt Not Do - astroturfing. Wikipedia says it's "a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising that seek to create the impression of being spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the artificial grass AstroTurf."
One of our Canadian colleagues broadens the sin to include "someone working in a professional capacity representing a company/brand/service, portrays themselves as disinterested or neutral - as just another member of a community." He warns that the "lack of transparency" (in Moses speak, lying) is usually evident to the community members who have finely attuned BS detectors.
The repercussions of astroturfing can be swift and sometimes severe.
Just last summer, it came out in the mainstream press that John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, a company founded on the very principles of goodness, had posted over a thousand entries on Yahoo's finance bulletin board for seven years under a pseudonym, Rahodeb. Some of his posts were whimsical (he complimented his own haircut); some were vigorous conversations with other posters. But his online attacks on Whole Foods' archrival Wild Oats led to inquiries by the SEC just as Mackey's long-planned acquisition came to fruition. Fourth-quarter earnings this year for Whole Foods are "lousy."
Surely, Mackey's online antics did not help.
Well, no surprise, astroturfing has found its way into politics. The liberal activist group MoveOn.org was blamed for manipulating the process of creating questions for a multimedia MySpace-MTV youth event featuring Senator Barack Obama. Instead of the MTV host Gideon Yago's promised dialogue based on questions from "you guys at home," the top question for the candidate was on the arcane and very niche issue of Internet neutrality. Not, the War in Iraq. Not health care. Not even gay marriage. Interesting that the MTV generation would line up in such an impassioned way to get this question to the top of the heap, huh?
You guessed it - astroturfing. The vote for that particular question had actually been promoted at the urging of TechPresident to MoveOn in an email to 60,000 MoveOn members. What is lost? An opportunity to find out what the young people of America really want from a future president.
Conscientious communicators across the world who are well-versed in the ways of net ethics are leading the charge against astroturfing:
Real success for companies and brands depends on being real; authentic. Lies damage them. And, we propose coining a term for that damage, similar to turf toe - the injury athletes suffer when their cleats get snagged on Astroturf.
Here at Halo, we're starting to use "cyber burn" as shorthand for what happens to a brand's reputation when it is tarnished by cyber lies.
We'd like to start tracking offenders and see what happens to their brands after the astroturfing is uncovered. We're betting that cyber burns and astroturfing put brands on the fast track to the online equivalent of the wages of sin ... to brand hell.
We invite submissions.
The repercussions of astroturfing can be swift and sometimes severe.
Just last summer, it came out in the mainstream press that John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, a company founded on the very principles of goodness, had posted over a thousand entries on Yahoo's finance bulletin board for seven years under a pseudonym, Rahodeb. Some of his posts were whimsical (he complimented his own haircut); some were vigorous conversations with other posters. But his online attacks on Whole Foods' archrival Wild Oats led to inquiries by the SEC just as Mackey's long-planned acquisition came to fruition. Fourth-quarter earnings this year for Whole Foods are "lousy."
Surely, Mackey's online antics did not help.
Well, no surprise, astroturfing has found its way into politics. The liberal activist group MoveOn.org was blamed for manipulating the process of creating questions for a multimedia MySpace-MTV youth event featuring Senator Barack Obama. Instead of the MTV host Gideon Yago's promised dialogue based on questions from "you guys at home," the top question for the candidate was on the arcane and very niche issue of Internet neutrality. Not, the War in Iraq. Not health care. Not even gay marriage. Interesting that the MTV generation would line up in such an impassioned way to get this question to the top of the heap, huh?
You guessed it - astroturfing. The vote for that particular question had actually been promoted at the urging of TechPresident to MoveOn in an email to 60,000 MoveOn members. What is lost? An opportunity to find out what the young people of America really want from a future president.
Conscientious communicators across the world who are well-versed in the ways of net ethics are leading the charge against astroturfing:
- http://blogcampaigning.com/2006/10/
- http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/2006/07/pr_bloggers_urg.html, and
- http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf
Real success for companies and brands depends on being real; authentic. Lies damage them. And, we propose coining a term for that damage, similar to turf toe - the injury athletes suffer when their cleats get snagged on Astroturf.
Here at Halo, we're starting to use "cyber burn" as shorthand for what happens to a brand's reputation when it is tarnished by cyber lies.
We'd like to start tracking offenders and see what happens to their brands after the astroturfing is uncovered. We're betting that cyber burns and astroturfing put brands on the fast track to the online equivalent of the wages of sin ... to brand hell.
We invite submissions.
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