Telstra agency created fake blog, video and music track to promote Trading Post relaunch
Ad agency BWM attempted to promote the Trading Post website through a fake blog and video in a breach of owner Telstra’s own published policies on social media engagement, Mumbrella can reveal.
The fake social media campaign was to tie in with an advertising campaign for Trading Post featuring a talking goat that said “Bargain” and frog that said “Reckon”.
But the campaign – which took place at the beginning of the year – did not find an audience. It only came to light yesterday after BWM uploaded a case study to its own YouTube channel.
Telstra’s detailed rules of social media engagement require staff – and contractors acting on the company’s behalf – to disclose their affiliations.
Telstra has been among the most active of Australia’s large corporations in experimenting with social media. Telstra set out its detailed rules of engagement after last year’s Fake Stephen Conroy furore in which a Telstra employee sent out satirical tweets on behalf of the media minister.
It appears that the Trading Post project took place independently of Telstra’s specialist social media team.
In the case study, BWM said it had created a viral video featuring a man training a goat to speak.
The video has achieved just over 40,000 views since it was uploaded in late December.
The accompanying blog – Talking Goat – purports to be the work of “Talking Goat Man”, who lists his mission as: “If there’s so many videos where goats are almost talking, there must be a way to train them to talk really. So I am going to try.”
It features a series of postings linking to popular YouTube videos about talking goats. The most recent posting was a link to the frog and goat on the Trading Post website. No mention is made on the blog that it was created on behalf of the company.
The goat and frog ad campaign launched earlier this year.
However, there is little evidence that the blog generated much interaction.
It features three comments – one that has since been deleted. The other two were posted within a few hours of each other. One of them was a link to a Trading Post video.
It appears that the published timing of the postings was tampered with to make it appear that the blog was older than it really was. Despite the fact that “Talking Goat Man” only signed up to the Blogger platform in October 2009, the first post is labelled as appearing two months before that.
According to Telstra’s social media rules:
“You are required to disclose that you are a Telstra employee and be clear about which business unit you are representing and what your role and accountabilities are.”
The rules also say:
“You are required to identify yourself as a Telstra employee if you refer to Telstra, its people, products or services.”
They add:
“A disclaimer is required when you refer to the work done by Telstra; comment on any Telstra-related or telecommunications issue; or provide a link to a Telstra website.”
The rules state that those covered include “agency workers, consultants, agents and suppliers”.
The case study also says that over the summer 19 DJs played a song mixed by Sydney DJ Pee Wee Ferris featuring the Word “Bargain”. The case study featured footage of the track being played at the Field Day festival. It is not clear whether the DJs were paid by Telstra to play the track.
According to the video case study, the results of the social media campaign have been “nothing short of amazing” . It says that page impressions for Trading Post have been up 26% and visits have been up by 15%.
The site is not on Nielsen Market Intelligence so Mumbrella is unable to get independent verification of those numbers. However, Alexa (which is less accurate so should be treated with some caution) suggests that audience reach has shown gradual decline since the campaign launched in mid January:
Kristen Boschma, Telstra head online communications and social media, told Mumbrella:
We should have acknowledged on the site that it was set up by Telstra. That’s being fixed now. This one slipped under the radar.
That’s what happens when you’re running big campaigns. I don’t know where the slip up occurred.”
Linkedin
The most fake thing about the campaign was that they masqueraded that there was actually a good idea there.
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Telstra biggest social media team doing the worst work. It’s all pathetic. Enjoying some of Vodafone’s work.
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Minor issue this, surely. Agency was just trying to be creative.
Nice work on digging out the Alexa stats though
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fake is the new real
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An ATL agency spoofing their Interactive creds?
Surely not.
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cool goat..:))
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Maybe nice “creative” …but does it sell more ads on Trading Post.?
Grief to profit ratio: 50:1
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Let me just say right off the back – i am no fan of telstra – never have been, never will be, but according to Nielsen Netview, tradingpost.com.au had a significant increase in UA ‘s from Dec, 2010 – 770,000 to 1,124,000 in Jan 2010. Although the decrease has been significant since january with a UA of only 695,000 in April – Maybe they were simply looking at this as a short term (read here -Jan only) strategy – they clearly haven’t been able to grow their audience – who wants trading post when there is ebay??
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Haha. It must be a quiet day on the news front if this is interesting, Mumbo. This site has become very boring. While I don’t like the campaign myself — it wasn’t aimed at me I guess — it was hard not to notice it. Creating a fake social media site? Who’s kidding who, Mumbo? Most social media stuff is faked. Jees.
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trading post IS in Nielsen Market Intelligence – it comes up under BigPond Trading Post with all the other BigPond stuff
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i’d be careful claiming stuff like this, mumbrella. wouldn’t want anyone to examine your blog too closely
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another fake blog, yawn, they should be embarrassed that it is the best idea they can come up with ‘hey I have a great idea, lets use a fake blog”
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Fake blog huh? That’s not anything interesting.
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Thanks for your comments ‘Dude for quality journalism’ and ‘Sue to the Sewers’.
By the way, it hasn’t escaped our notice that you both appear to share the same IP address.
Cheers,
Mumbrella – Camille
@TLC 2010 – I wonder how much of the Jan spike is due to people selling stuff post-Christmas? Does such an uptick in Jan happen every year?
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lol, Camille. Nooooooooooooooo. Someone faking it on Mumbrella??!!!?? Whatever is the world coming to?
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Oi Chris,
Stop bringing year-on-year into this. It ruins the skewed stats.
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This case study reflects the ad world’s approach to building relationships and engaging customers via social media, which is to throw superficial creative at a short term fix.
Perhaps the client’s attitude is also a problem.
Either way, a campaign based approach to social media is going to result in one of two things:
1. Short term impact, unsustained benefit
2. No impact, no benefit
You can decide for yourself in this case.
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I wasn’t offended by the campaign or the creative – & regardless of what I thought, a lot of people talked about it, so ignoring any change in sales, there’s obviously been some gains in brand awareness at the very least.
And yes, I agree on a business front … why use Trading Post when u can use eBay? … but that’s beside the point here … the agency were engaged (presumably) to create a campaign to promote TP, not to change their business model.
My only complaint is against the fake blog … it didn’t work for a reason … users can sniff a fake a mile off – ESPECIALLY online/in social media …& whilst Telstra’s SM transparency rules may be a tad too restrictive, I do believe marrying transparency/ an authentic voice to relevance = a positive user experience.
A cynical marketing subterfuge you’d never attempt offline ain’t gonna work just cos you’re in the ‘anonymous’ space of online!
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2 further things:
Chris – “Fake” is NOT the new “real” – “real” has for some time now been the new, well, “real” (ie AUTHENTICITY is key to REAL, long-lasting, valuable engagement).
And Dan – I agree … campaign-based SM – IN AND OF ITSELF – doesn’t work … you need to commence your dialogue (& first contact via a campaign is OK I think) … then continue it, & enhance it – and continue it again – adding value each time – conversations with your social media ‘constituents’, in order to successfully engage with an SM audience.
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Do you think comments 9 and 11 are from the agency or the client?
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Who’s the goat now?
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Hi Thorby (comment 10),
I may be doing it wrong, but I can’t seem to pull individual data for Trading Post out of MarketIntelligence – only a headline BigPond score.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Zac – hmmmm I would say the agency side for sure!
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