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Shooting Yourself In the Foot, 21st Century Style
rueger writes "Right now there's an election happening in British Columbia. A desperate government is flooding Facebook with "Sponsored Post" spam (example) extolling the wonderful things that they plan to do if re-elected. There's one problem though. Every one of these posts is followed by hundreds of extremely negative comments added by people who either dislike the party in question, or Facebook spam in general. Desperate moderators are trying to control the 'discussion,' but seem to have no hope of doing so. What was thought to be a cool marketing tool has turned into a public relations disaster. Is this the worst use of social media in an election?"
Still no one gets it.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205975/Waitrose-Twitter-backlash-I-shop-Waitrose--I-dont-like-surrounded-poor-people.html 'I shop at Waitrose because... I don't like being surrounded by poor people': Internet jokers hijack 'posh people's supermarket' Twitter stunt Supermarket asks Twitter why people go there using the hashtag #WaitroseReasons but got some answers it will not have liked Majority of people who replied concentrated on its posh reputation and only a minority gave serious answers 'I shop at Waitrose because Clarrisa’s pony just WILL NOT eat ASDA Value straw,' one said Another said: 'I shop at Waitrose because the toilet paper is made from 24ct gold thread' Waitrose's PR team tweeted back that they enjoyed 'most of them'
Depends on your point of view - as a publicity stunt, it is an epic fail. It should have also been expected. Keeping open discussions on the internet is inherently problematic, even if you are posting the most non-controversial of statements. Start a discussion on how cancer is bad for humans, and there will be someone posting about how good it is for population control.
On the other hand, if some of the top government officials can be bothered to read the criticism, they might actually learn something. While democracy is great and all that, once people get into office they might as well be governing from the moon. It's easy for you to refuse to allocate funds to fix my roads if you don't use them on a daily basis.
The internet has made it easy to offer feedback and that should (in theory) help people govern better. While it is true that we could always "write/call" our congressman, it isn't really practical when you get to higher levels of government (e.g. do my tax dollars go to fund a war or education).
the people running the show thought "let's market on facebook yeah!"
and then they hired some fucktard that ruined their campaign.
Actually I think the idea is dumb. Political ideas are very divided, you're either for these guys or the oposing party. Since people are more likely to relate negative opinions than positive ones, you can only expect negative public comments to outnumber positive ones - there's no way this could come across as a positive endorsement.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
They still don't get it.
The fact that politicians are allowed to lie in an election is just insane. Politicians present a budget that just is not balanced. If a detergent commercial would include lies of such magnitude, they'd be banned from tv. And the politicians wonder why people do not feel connected to politics.
They still don't get it. Politicians shouldn't be using simple marketing at all. But because one is doing it, they're all doing it. They can only solve it together.
If the advertiser is truly desperate, it may have been worth the gamble.
Here, I interpret "desperate" as "likely to lose." They may have realized that the normal route (kissing babies, buying TV ads) wasn't going to work.
If you're going to lose, gambling big makes sense. The downside is losing (and you were losing anyway). The upside is winning (and it is huge).
I always wondered if this is why immigrant Americans seem to start so many businesses...they have little to lose while us native born folks with equal skills have decent jobs and houses and see no reason to risk all that. (I'm biased, I still prefer arguing with my son over homework to driving a fancy car).
It's just an indication that the sheer ignorance on the part of government of the use of the internet in general and social media in particular is world-wide. Hell, the people who dreamed up the idea probably think spam is a good mass marketing tool. Politicians are the same everywhere - disconnected and with a blind sense of entitlement.
When Facebook started injecting "sponsored content" into the news feed, I started getting quite annoyed and letting the owners of that content know in my comments to their link.
As much as Facebook wants to sell ads, if the people whose ads are there are getting angry comments, they might figure out that people don't want it.
When you start injecting ads into things people can comment on, you might quickly discover the people those ads are being sent to don't give a crap about you and your product. These ads are intrusive enough that people notice them and don't like them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Advertising -- especially political advertising -- is about controlling the message.
Social media is about allowing the message to be debated.
If you want the market penetration of social media, fine. But unless you can disable commenting, you have to take the bad with the good.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
We let two corrupt groups of people both offer up a corrupt person to be our representative, and we get to pick which one we hate the least.
The BC government has done such a horrible PR job that I don't like them from the opposite side of the country. I detest the government here yet I can make a bigger list of reasons to hate the outgoing BC government starting with the Chinese miners.
This just confirms a pet theory that government needs to be wide open to the people. The internet is helping yet the BC government has thought that they could do what they want and somehow retain power by creating their own reality. This is becoming harder and harder to do but backroom deals still abound in most governments. Quite simply governments should not be able to hide almost any information. When I mention this to government people they say No No No that would prevent us from doing what needs to be done; to which I reply it would prevent you from doing what people don't want you doing.
Is that American style "politics of hate" have taken root here in Canada, over the last decade or so.
Arrragggh! Pee pee doo doo he is a bad president I am mad I have no job blargh a blag a fucking bloo.
I wish the U.S. President and U.S. Congress would use the same tactics so they and everybody else would see how much they are all hated.
The problem: There's a world of difference between not knowing what people think of you, and not giving a rat's ass.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Early internet had so many review sites that gave relatively unbiased information while the established players like PC Mag was seen to be basically shills. Eventually those review sites died or became shills or got lost in the noise of shill sites. Reviews in Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco etc all started out decent and died due to shills. Amazon seems to be fighting a losing battle with the shills.
Essentially the basic rule is this: If costs nothing to post a review or a message, expect to be overwhelmed by spam and shills. It is simply vendors adapting to the new medium. No way good samaritans would be able to keep up with the volume churned out by the vested interests and they will be lost in the noise. Bold prediction: Same fate will befall wikipedia, eventually.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is in Canada.
There's more than one "opposing party".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This is the dangerous side to social media. Because you can't control the message, things can spin wildly out of control particularly if the numbers aren't extremely in your favor to begin with. If you're a small company with a small customer base, one negative comment, justified or not, can destroy you. A negative comment can quickly go viral and they you're completely borked. You have no legal recourse to punish the liars and set the record straight. If you have an enormous positive following, that works to your advantage because they will defend you when someone brings up a negative even if it is true.
The party in government is basically selling off everything owned by the government to either private corporations or semi-independant authorities, (authorities which apparently aren't covered by freedom of information legislation), doesn't understand that it was private debt that created the financial crisis, not public, that it wasn't anything in Canada that created the financial crisis, etc. Despite calling themselves Liberal, they are basically Conservatives, (the actual BC Conversatives just have those too conservative to consider joining a party labeled Liberal).
The October Surprise is why he lost, period. The fix was in, soon to be followed up with Iran-Contra as payment-in-kind for their win.
There is no one worth voting for.
I live in BC.
I can't vote for the Liberals, because they are massively corrupt, and incompetent. Plus the woman who suppodedly is "leading" them is incapable of leadership of any kind.
I can't vote for the NDP, because the last time they were in power they fucked the economy so badly it took over a decade to recover, and their promises sound like they have learned nothing.
I can't vote for the Greens because they are a bunch of NIMBY assholes who obstruct any and all progress.
I can throw my vote away on an independant, but what is the point?
Nobody left.
I am going to start building my bunker.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?