Slashdot Mirror
Sony-Ericsson Starts US$5M Astroturf Campaign
lairdb writes "The WSJ reports today (31Jul02) that Sony Ericsson will be marketing their new T68i cellphone/camera combo unit via "shills" to create a grassroots buzz. Specific tactics will include fake tourist couples at popular attractions asking bystanders to take their picture, and "leaners": pairs of women ("actresses and female models") at bars playing interactive Battleship with each other from opposite ends of the bar.
"[T]he company has gone to considerable lengths to train it's actors to avoid detection [as Ericsson spokespeople.]""
... before the pick-pocket crowd notice these shills... With their neverending supply of cameras provided by the company... Being paid to hand them over to other people they don't know... cameras that are new and thus expensive and in high demand...
This should be amusing.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Supposedly the actors/models hired for this won't lie when asked if they work for Sony/Ericson, but I wonder how specific the line of questioning has to be? These people are going to waste other peoples' time asking for photos to be taken of them. Ordinarily I'd gladly take a photo of a couple, but these photos are meaningless.
Astroturf isn't nearly so offensive when they're admitting to it up front. In fact, it's more like the Turing Test - can you tell the real technophile barfly from the fake one? Of course, I think the odds of running into two women playing wireless Battleship in a bar are pretty low, so the test would be biased in favor of 'shill' - but for other tests it would be kinda fun.
Most of you people will dismiss this because it's coming from Sony, but were it Microsoft doing something similar you'd be raising all kind of hell.
I'm more worried about Sony that I've been about Microsoft. Sony has its hands on too many things and has shown a willingness to use any means to abuse its position.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
This type of advertising campaign, for me, is more of a 'turn on' to the product than a commercial. It's a real life demonstration of the product's capabilities in a setting you'd use them...think infomercial cept live.
Plus, because you don't know you're being targetedly-advertised to, you're more receptive to the idea. Adds have the problem of overcoming the psycological barrier of "being sold", whereas a tourist who needs his picture taken, and also happens to have an elite new digital camera/cell phone that you want to know more about, is more effective. It leaves more of an impression.
Impression is what advertisers are after, at the bottom line.
Before a certain incident which messed up the airline industry pretty bad, my brother held a similar job for one of the major commercial airlines. He was an internet shill for this company. His job was to visit travel websites, message boards, newsgroups, and even AOL travel forums and basically promote his employer as subtlely as possible. The idea was to create a good image of the airline without making it obvious that he worked for them.
He'd make posts under fake names telling stories of how he just used the airline and had a great experience. If he found someone railing on the airline for a particular issue ("my inflight meal was dry") he'd counter it with a positive example ("I flew from LA to Miami last week and the food was great"). Same thing if people were complaining about fares, being bumped, or whatever. He was like an anonymous and multi-faceted PR guy, doing his best to influence peoples opinions of his airline.
I wouldn't doubt that other industries are doing the exact same thing.
People think that advertising has to be labelled, but that's only in certain places. Like most respectable newspapers require it, and the FCC sort of requires it for TV content. But those TV news shows they hit you with on airplanes are full of paid plugs that aren't disclosed. Perfectly legal but sorry. There's also something that looks like a scientific medical journal that gets sent to a million or three people in America that's full of articles plugging worthless products from an operator whose record is so bad that the Bush Brothers gave back his contributions when they found out about him.
Tommy Hillfiger did this to promote their clothes in poor black areas of NYC.
Triv
Sony-Ericsson is going much further with this, to actually train and pay the people. That's unusual. Those people who hand you invites in clubs seldom get more than free admission. Models who go out in designer outfits often get the outfit as a freebie, but no pay. Many of the wilder haircuts are freebies, too; stylists have to try out their exotic styles on somebody. Ask women with wild haircuts where they got them done; often it's a promotional deal. And almost everybody in the sales end of the rag trade gets promotional deals on clothing.
The net result of this kind of marketing will be to make people suspicious of each other. It is evil. As someone else pointed out, normal demos would do better, except they might be run off by park officials for soliciting.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When XP and Redhat 7.(2 or 3) came out at about the same time, I went right over to CompUsa to get my copy and as I approached the checkout counter some guy who had been standing near the register with a box of XP excitedly asked the clerk if there was any software for XP, who pointed at the Office XP, etc. in the first rack behind the registers. He ran over and merrily grabbed one of everything that said XP on it and headed back to get in line behind me. The clerk virtually busted out laughing when he saw I was buying Redhat though I didn't get the feeling that he was laughing at me, and he said they had been selling a lot of it. The whole thing with the XP guy just seemed staged, especially after I looked back on my way out and they weren't even ringing up his "purchases". So I don't think using shills to generate fake excitement is anything new.
"The company decided to make available hundreds of sets of the new portable cassette player, free of charge, to key persons prior the public launch. These key persons were carefully chosen and selected. Sets were given to magazine editors, and specially, touring musicians, they use to carry records and tapes of the music they are going to play and the directors comments and instructions of different aspects of the piece in order to be prepared for the concert."
.. who owns the Ericsson phone business??? Sony!
"A further promotional tactic involved the company paying couples to stroll through Tokyoís biggest and important shopping district whilst listening to their Walkmans. Several Vox Populi interviews. were conducted in collaboration with broadcasters, in the airports and train stations, to ask visitors to Japan about their opinion and their responses to the new portable cassette
player. Their reactions were video - taped and featured in news broadcasts."
Wait a second
More on http://www.eafit.edu.co/revista/117/acosta.pdf
It's called 'society'. At one time it was considered rather important.
These "ads" are live demonstrations of a working product. Whether or not the person doing the demonstration is honest is largely irrelevant. The consumer should focus on the product and it's merits.
I disagree.
If the consumer is expected to "focus on the product, and it's merits", then why isn't the vendor held to the same standard?
The product itself doesn't change by placing attractive models in a bar, now does it? Strange that they choose to sell it on that basis, then. Hmm.. might it be that by misrepresenting the ease of use and popularity of their devices, they hope to artifically boost sales?
Popularity actually does provide a reasonable first-order approximation of whether a product is a reasonable value. If a lot of other people have bought something, and are happy, then chances are you won't feel ripped off if you buy the same thing.
By planting fake "happy consumers" of the devices, Ericcson is deliberately providing false value metrics to the real consumers. It's a form of misrepresentation just shy of fraud, IMHO, but probably doesn't veer over the line. Then again, I'm not a lawyer.
The vendor here is clearly abusing people's good nature -- I'm willing, as a gesture of goodwill towards those in my society, to help a couple out by taking their picture, even if it takes time out of my day, but I'm not willing to invest the same amount of time to listen to a product placement for a product that I don't want. For instance, I don't want an Ericcson cell phone.
Furthermore, there's a question of trust. If I can't trust the person doing the demonstration not to misrepresent themself and their purposes, how can I trust them not to misrepresent their products? If a vendor isn't honest, why buy from them?!!
I don't think this company is doing themselves any favours. I'm certainly not buying this product from them, and probably not any others, as well. Who knows what else they're not telling me?
Would you rather see a couple hot chicks in the bar playing battleship (and actually even be able to engage in a conversation with them, the fact they're selling you a phone aside) or would you rather see yet another fucking pop-up, banner ad, spam, billboard, or tv commercial?
How is it any different from seeing a new toy that a friend, co-worker, or even complete stranger has and deciding you might want to buy one? Who was the first person you ever saw with a Palm Pilot? Did they tell you how much it costs and where you can get one? How's that any different?
An old business partner and I used a similar tactic when we were running a small gunsmithing business....we put together a couple of really pimped out custom rifles (a couple AR-15s and an SKS) and hit the local firing ranges. When people would ask "wow, where the hell did you get that?" we'd hand them a business card and let 'em take a few shots. I don't see this phone tactic as much different....it's a non-intrusive way to get your product out there.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Yes it's been used before, but this grasroots buzz thang got into a lot of people's heads recently with the publication of the book _The Tipping Point_. The book described, in a number of ways, how big changes come from a series of small events. One of the examples was about buzz around shoes - the inner-city kids wanted 'em because they were cheap (because nobody else wanted them); because so many kidz bought 'em they became kinda hip; fashion designers saw them in clubs/bars and started dresing their models in them; magazine editors saw the models on runways and in ads, and started doing stories on them, etc.
I'm giving the simplistic version. _The Tipping Point_ is not just about marketing buzz, but the book did well enough that I think a lot of marketers want to use the "tipping point" principles for their product -- and that starts with buzz creation. If it works, expect to see more of it.