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Industry Group Sponsors College Course To Create Fake Blog
Scott Jaschik writes "At Hunter College, professors are debating the ethics of a course in which an industry group paid for a class to develop a fake student who would write a fake blog to discourage other students from buying knockoff products. The controversy involves both commercial interference with academic freedom and the ethics of 'guerilla marketing.'"
Cooperate sponsored fraud in order to deter legal purchases of questionable knock-off products.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The blog finally admitted that it was fake: http://encounterheidi.blogspot.com/2007/05/here-is-catch-i-am-totally-not-real.html . I love how the students who created this blog chose the ditsy valley girl stereotype to convey their message, and stuck with the persona 'till the bitter end: "Here is the catch- I am totally not real!"...the bolding was me.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
They are attempting to create a counterfeit person to persuade people to dislike counterfeit goods.
Counterfeiting of goods does suck, but this does not seem to be the way to get people on your side...
As a Hunter student I am outraged that I was not monetarily compensated with part of this graft.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
Authenticity and originality are key to the youth demographic and they know it. The problem is that ads have failed at those for a long time. Some ads can still do it through humor and strange premises (like the old spice ads I love so much). Unfortunately, people are smart, and copying another ad campaign's success backfires more often than not.
It's a problem that's crept up on them for the last few years. Frankly, I'm shocked that corporations are struggling to look authentic and original.
The blog was not sponsored! I met this poor Heidi girl and she was really heartbroken about that counterfeit handbag, so we swapped our sob stories. I got real cool Dell as a birthday present, but then it turned out it had a counterfeit copy of Vista installed. Not only the wallpaper had a slightly different color, but the fonts on the screen were not as crisp and defined as on REAL Vista. Worst of all, I couldn't enjoy any of the Windows Genuine Advantage downloads.
Then I started reading up on that and discovered that software counterfeiting is invariably linked to crime and even terrorism. Wouldn't somebody think of the children! Be a broken link in the chain and stop software piracy! Most importantly, don't undermine american capitalism by using free software that is anyway full of stolen code and patent infringements!
The "fake blog" portion of the story is compelling, but it isn't the whole story. all in all, the actions of the university and the coalition (the IACC) were pretty repugnant. The school engineered the course to teach the industry viewpoint and ensured (via industry observers) that the professor did not deviate from the talking points. when the story initially broke, the school decided that it was an internal matter and didn't merit any outside scrutiny.
The professor in question voiced real ethical problems with the course but was basically told to shut up and teach--because he didn't have tenure that was pretty much his only option. The job market for PhD's without tenure isn't exactly robust.
Never mind that this was basically taxpayer subsidized indoctrination.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Once they work out how to fake authenticity, they'll crack the youth demographic wide open.