Paying People to Create Word of Mouth Buzz
from the the-evil-side-of-marketing dept
Yes, it seems that marketing continues to sink lower and lower. Now, apparently, companies are paying people to act like fans and generate buzz online in chat rooms and such. I thought this might be happening, but I do wonder if paid for buzz has a very hollow ring to it. Word of mouth buzz usually works best when the people receiving the buzz get it from folks they know, trust, and respect. If random folks just show up in a chat room screaming about some new movie, I’d wonder about it.
Comments on “Paying People to Create Word of Mouth Buzz”
Cool
Anything that makes us more suspicious of strangers can’t be all bad.
MB
It's not all that new
After all, they’ve been paying people to laugh in the back of theaters for how long?
Also, I’ve seen ads advertising jobs as political protesters. (How lame does your cause have to be when you have to HIRE your protesters?)
Same $#!#, different medium.
Jon Acheson
Not really new
Microsoft’s PR firm, Waggener-Edstrom, was doing this years ago, according to an article in Brill’s Content. They had people go online into all kinds of news groups and talk up MS products.
But giving swag out for positive word of mouth seems like an old idea. Radio stations routinely give away copies of some artist’s new album in contests. It’s a little less blatent tit for tat exchange, in that the winner is not required to talk up the album, but the idea is that they will.
The internet is just making these old ideas more pervasive.