Andy Sernowitz talks about how MGM/ABC appear to be astroturfing blogs in the comments. Someone is promoting a movie DVD and saying how good it is without declaring that they are apparently being paid to promote the site - at least that is the conclusion looking at the content and the emails. You quickly learn how to spot (most) of these. I usually let them through with an editorial comment attached.

Bu how come big companies like this are still not learning from their and others’ mistakes. There have been so many cases of astroturfing being spotted, why bother. It’s either the brand itself or an agency working for them, both of whom should know better.

I was looking through my referrers and found a link from this BabyExpert Forum, linking through to one of the sessions on mobile use I had written up the other week.

Rimmel campaign in the UK. We created phonewear - mobile is a reflection of you and your personality. Rimmel can and built on this. A number was in a TV ad - phone a number -get told to text to a shortcode, got free Rimmel screensaver. You got a silver image - or a ‘gold’ crown - drive you to the MySpace page, with a code, to win 25GBP of goodies. On day 1, had 1000 calls and a 50% conversion rate No other ads.. (only a few days old).

They were discussing a post on the forum and whether it was legitimate or not, as it was encouraging people to text a shortcode and there was concern that this was a scam. My post apparently gave them a reason to think it was legitimate.

On a closer look at the original forum post however has all the hallmarks of being a paid placement, ie some agency somewhere is running a buzz campaign.

just got £25 worth of free stuff off Rimmel by accident!!!
Last night i was watching TV with a few friends and some wine, and that new Rimmel advert came on, you know the one where the bloke wakes up with a number written on this arm. Anyway we wondered what would happen if you phoned the number?
I phoned the number and where given a number to text, which we thought was a bit rubbish but decided to text it anyway. After I text the number I got a free sparkely wallpaper sent to my phoned and a message saying I won £25 of Rimmel Goodies, Which is pretty awesome.
I just thought I’d let you all know because I think its a bit of a secret

Here’s the number you need to text 83338, so you dont have to waste your money phoning. Good Luck!

There are a number of signs that point this way. I may be wrong, but the indications are strong.

• The poster is a newbie, this is her first post
• The same username has posted the SAME message on multiple beauty forums. These include Marie Claire and Prima
• the language is off. This is subtle, as this message has mistakes, but it does not feel real.
• the campaign is new and timebound, so perfect for this type of marketing.

Whilst I support the use of outreach campaigns, I would never recommend doing this way. Instead, the message should have clearly stated that the writer was associated with the campaign, but still thought it was something that the readers would appreciate. Going out and being anonymous has backfired in this case, as posters are suspicious and think it is a scam (look a the Prima messages) and Rimmel, by association, are not getting good vibes.

I got a comment on my Bratz post yesterday. Nothing new there, I got quite a few on the Barbie posts. But this one made me stop and take a closer look at it - it just looked wrong to me. (extract below)

Personally, I find the Bratz dolls to be an exact copy of the Barbies I played with when I was a little girl … Recently, I found the solution to my problems. As an avid collector of dolls, I have to say the TyGirlz dolls are incredible and way better than Bratz! … I am over the same dull looking plastic Barbies or Bratz. For everyone else looking for something different or quality dolls. I recommend the TyGirlz,

Hey, for some unknown reason I work in advertising and this language just looked far too polished and like too many releases I’ve seen to be real. So I looked up the IP address the comment was posted from, only to find it came from Animax Interactive, the company that made the online world for TyGirlz. It could be an innocent comment from a fan working at the company who wants to spread the word or it could be a more deliberate policy. Either way, they need some education about how to disclose who they are in the comments and in speaking less like a Press Release. (see the previous post) But at the moment, this is just astroturfing. The previous post has some good hints!