Slide 2:
The PR firm, Edelman, has admitted that they are behind three blogs that initially appeared to be run by nonaffiliated supporters of Wal-Mart.
Three Edelman employees are the actual writers of these two blogs, “Working Familes for Wal-Mart,” “Wal-Marting Across America,” and “Paid Critics.”
Online critics called for the blogs to be more transparent with who was running the blogs. "In response to comments and emails, we've added author bylines to blog posts…" announced the site.
Slide 3:
A common Internet marketing scheme is the “meat puppet:” a fake person that tries to pass as having a real identity.
Ruckus Network Inc. did this very thing by creating a fake Facebook account.
They created a fake account and befriended thousands of people on the website. By the time Facebook realized that the account was a fake, Ruckus had already contracted 300,000 email addresses. They used those addresses to send company information, promotions, and newsletters via email.
Slide 4:
A blog site, alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, appeared to be authored by an amateur hip-hop artist whose cousin wanted a Sony PSP for Christmas.
The blog was written in over-the-top hip-hop and Internet vernacular and aroused suspicions among those who visited the site.
It turned out that the site was actually run by Zipatoni, a public relations firm with Sony as their client.
Slide 5:
The company also paid graffiti artists in major United States cities to paint murals of people playing with the gadget.
The murals were transparent to many people and caused a backlash against the product and the company.
Slide 6:
Jim Nail, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Cymfony said, “The blog world is a very open, self-policing and pretty unforgiving world when you try to trick them with things like this. I don’t understand why marketers, after all the different examples of this, don’t get the message that you can’t get away with faking these kinds of blogs.”