You may or may not have seen this little story blow up into a fairly heated debate on Mumbrella today.
An agency came under fire today for doing what I, and most others believe to be unethical and wrong. They advertised this job on Gumtree.
“The job requires you to have very good search skills to find conversations online. You will then take on a supplied persona and join in on the conversation.
“You will have to be clever and adaptive, if you don’t know about a subject then you will have to learn how to “sell” yourself as authentic.
“This is NOT spam, you are adding value to the conversation. You are respectful and knowledgeable and most importantly having fun.
“If this sounds like you and you have strong English writing skills, then please I want to hear from you.”
If you’ve got an opinion or want to read the full story, go to Mumbrella, I’ve collated the many heated comments and summarised the views below.
90% of 20 marketers think using fake persona is wrong
| Leslie Nassar | Against | ||
| Alex Campbell | Against | http://www.alexjcampbell.com/ | |
| David Jackmanson | Against | http://bit.ly/djackmanson | |
| David | For | http://thelostagency.wordpress.com/ | |
| Stuart Sheridan | Against | ||
| Sam Granleese | Against | ||
| Ben Shepherd | Against | ||
| Nick Holmes a Court | For | http://www.buzznumbershq.com/ | |
| Stephen Collins | Against | http://www.acidlabs.org/ | |
| Justin Hind | Against | http://www.justinhind.wordpress.com/ | |
| Il Jung | Against | ||
| Cheryl Gledhil | Against | http://www.moltn.com/ | |
| Smithee | Against | ||
| Stilgherrian | Against | http://stilgherrian.com/ | |
| Karalee | Against | http://justanotherprblog.wordpress.com/ | |
| Riley Batchelor | Against | ||
| Will Hughes | Against | ||
| Melinda | Against | http://www.thecontentagency.com.au/ | |
| Gnoll110 | Against | http://twitter.com/gnoll110 | |
| Damian Guiney | Against | http://www.visualjazz.com.au/ |
August 30th, 2009 on 10:24 pm
Marketer? No, I just hate spam and astroturfing.
August 30th, 2009 on 10:37 pm
I’m not particularly a marketer either. Writer, producer, broadcaster, commentator and other things.
In this context, it’d be about what I’d allow in programs or publications I was responsible for. All commercial connections disclosed, end of story. Just ask Alan Jones and John Laws. Or not.
.-= Stilgherrian´s last blog: “Influence is the future of media”, eh? =-.
September 4th, 2009 on 7:40 am
I don’t really think 20 is a big enough sample size considering the size of the net lol.
I have no problem with a fake personality. It would have to be damn good anyway otherwise it would be shown the door extremely quickly.
The fact is that most forum or chat members would quickly disembowel the troll. So yeah my 2 cents