CNN Viral Anti-Marketing Blog Spamming Campaign?
from the say-what? dept
John submitted this bizarre story apparently making its way rapidly around the blogworld suggesting that CNN may have been involved in a viral anti-marketing blog spamming campaign. The idea is that they went looking for blog posts that were critical of CNN (not too hard, I imagine) and posted something that looked to be in agreement, highlighting a specific show, with the idea of making it seem extra controversial. It sounds like they might have gotten away with it (Scooby Doo ending here...) if only they hadn't also keyword stuffed the post -- clearly making it spam. Of course, a lot of what's in the post exposing this story is still conjecture about the motives of whoever was involved in the process. It's entirely possible that it wasn't CNN at all -- but either way, the pattern described is somewhat odd. While blog comment spamming has been around for a while, it at least sounds like some less-than-above-board marketers of more legitimate companies are experimenting with the tactic. Given this and the likely growth of tag spam, it certainly suggests that one of the biggest issues when you have a very writable web is going to be dealing with the spam.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Proof?
Also, Nick Lewis provides no evidence that CNN was responsible, but instead just jumps to conclusions. While I am not passing judgment on CNN one way or the other, you should always be prepared to provide proof before making any type of allegation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Proof?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Proof?
My point was simply that without proof, I would attribute this spam to someone's idea of being funny. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: CNN guerrilla spam
The only tools i had to uncover this were technorati, pluck, google, blogpulse, and then the wealth of knowledge on the INternet about P.R. practices, Guerrilla marketing, viral marketing tactics ect...
My goal was to publish something sufficently compelling as to create a buzz, and thereby catch the attention of a journalist who could get access to CNN PR people and get to the bottom of this story.
I do believe this was CNN; my reasons being that targetting 14 bloggers who had negative Opinions of CNN is an odd thing to do, as a prank. In addition, leaving those search terms was a very clever strategy; it could have been stupidity, however given the targeted nature of these spams, I'm tempted to say it wasn't.
In addition, when you read the spams, you don't get the impression that they are written by a whacko. Actually, you get the impression that your reading a marketer who is putting a lot of effort into blending in. Its not a coincidence that the so called negative opinions in the spam happen to be the chief selling points of CNN primetime, for example:
"They even constantly have on NANCY GRACE (talk about trashy, she is the queen of trash)."
"they have this format that focuses on entertainment news and gossip. It is awful...worse than FoxNews...Actually it is more like The Enquirer meets Fox News."
"Please, if you have not yet seen prime time tonight...check it out tonight. It is usually on later in the evening. After you have seen this garbage, try telling me that I am wrong."
Its no secret that gossip and trash gets high ratings. The conversation that I made up with the marketer was speculation, however I thought it explained why this strategy works rather well.
In any case, I've successfully gotten this story on the radar, and professional journalists are now investigating it. They are now getting the answers that I could not get. So whatever the truth is, we'll all know soon enough.
BTW, thanks for the mention, Mike.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]