January 18th, 2009, 1 Comment »
As CrunchGear reports (courtesy of Mathew Ingram), an employee at Belkin was caught using Amazon’s crowd-sourcing tool Mechanical Turk to spam positive reviews of their routers on Amazon and other sites. The evidence was pretty damning, and Belkin’s President Mark Reynoso copped to the fake reviews pretty quickly. Here’s an excerpt from his apology letter:
So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.
Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction.
This is the standard corporate line:
- We had no idea this was going on.
- It was the act of a single (often ‘low-level’) employee (the Lone Gunmen Theory of Corporate Deflection).
- It is, in no way, a reflection of our organization.
The letter itself is pretty goofy. First, why say “may have posted”? If there was any ambiguity, the company’s president wouldn’t be writing a letter on Sunday afternoon. Additionally, the guy worked for Belkin. So to say that “Belkin does not participate in…unethical practices” is inaccurate. If a Belkin employee promotes Belkin unethically, in the course of his work day, with Belkin’s money, then there’s no question that Belkin does participate in those practices. And “great surprise and dismay” is protesting a bit too much, isn’t it?
In the so-called age of conversation, surely we’re all tired of companies acting unethically, and then deploying waffling, corporate language to deflect or evade blame.
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October 5th, 2007, 16 Comments »
Dave Cournoyer recently wrote about Get It Right Alberta, a faux special interest group that’s a classic example of astroturfing at work. From the ‘organization’s’ website:
Concerned Albertans, including private citizens, small oil and gas companies and members of the investment community, have come together to launch this website, www.getitrightalberta.ca. The website is a result of mounting concern surrounding the recommendations contained within the Report of the Alberta Royalty Review Panel (ARRP), which appear to go beyond the original mandate of “striking a balance.”
I’m not particularly interested in discussing the royalties issue (but feel free if you have an opinion)–I want to examine the site’s questionable tactics.
There’s no indication anywhere on the site as to who these ‘concerned Albertans’ actually are. I have no problem with advocacy websites–I’ve got a couple as clients–but full disclosure is essential to becoming a legitimate part of the online debate. Who would possibly take this site seriously?
And Who’s Jim McCormick?
Exploring the site a little, I found an interview on City TV’s Breakfast Television with someone named ‘Jim McCormick’, who’s a representative of the site. The segment doesn’t disclose anything else about Mr. McCormick. Maybe all the viewers already know who he is? The interviewer asks about the people behind the site, and he replies “A lot of us, across a spectrum of professions”. Curiously satisfied with that reply, she doesn’t probe any further. That’s some incisive journalism there.
Dave did a WHOIS lookup, and determined that the site was not founded by everyday Joe Albertans, but by the folks at the Calgary office of public relations giant Hill & Knowlton. This woman in particular–Lisa Litz–registered the domain.
Shame on Hill & Knowlton–they’re a big, international agency and ought to know better. It’s underhanded, sketchy moves like this that give us marketing folks a bad name. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised–this is the same company that’s advocated for tobacco, the first war in Iraq and Scientology over the years. They have a long history of underhanded tactics.
Hill & Knowlton has a whole blogger network going. I’d really like to hear some reaction to GetItRightAlberta.ca and my post from the likes of Ian or Brendan.
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