Like Dave, what I found most interesting (and that was a tough call given the amount of dubious and unethical practice this guy was self-servingly touting) was his –and by extension– his firms’ attitude toward moderating comments. The heading gives you a pretty good idea of their contorted approach to the concept of integrity:

Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself

Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.
Dan Ackerman Greenberg

You have to respect their self-styled lack of fear in deleting criticism, don’t you? I certainly admire his courage for sharing his venal, duplicitous professional practices with us.

Of course, this is not an isolated instance. It seems the growth in influence of social media is accompanied by an increasing willingness to try and control the message using a lamentably old media mindset, albeit assisted by some very clever technology.

Another blogger details how the San Francisco Chronicle uses software to continue to display deleted comments to the people who posted them, leaving them completely unaware that their views have been hidden from everyone else that visits the site. Subsequent commenters to the post then reveal that other sites are using similar techniques.

All of this has led to the obvious Web 2.0-type social media solution: a forum for people to post their comments that have been censored by moderators on other sites. don’tcensorme.com claims that

Your right to free speech online is at the mercy of website moderators. There are no checks in place for moderators online. This site aims to change that and put the balance of power back in your hands.

I don’t think freedom of speech is really at risk here; it seems more a case of an inept attempt at reputation management by suppressing critical comment. The important lesson to takeaway is that, no matter how devious or cunning you are, your perfidy will be exposed and your reputation will be forever linked (and cached) to the evidence.

For public sector communicators there is more at stake. Agencies cannot afford to risk their reputations like this; we should openly suffer the slings and arrows and attempt to build our reputation by engaging with substantive criticism, rather than deleting dissent:

Fairness: social media is about reciprocity, if you are going to engage and invite comment then accept the good with the bad. Post a very clear comments policy and stick to it. Don’t delete comments because they are critical of your agency or policies.
Principles of public sector social media.

Ultimately, private sector organizations that are exposed behaving unethically will answer to their customers or the market. Government agencies endure; our job is to build trust, not to gamble with it.

Photo: spacesuitcatalyst.

And while I have to admit that this is admirable in its intent, I really am struggling to come to terms with how on earth they are going to police, much less enforce this law.

Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites (sic)
purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.

From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.

Taken to court? For sockpuppetry and astroturfing? Let’s think this through for a minute…

I, nefarious PR mastermind that I am, convince my client that creating a blog that lauds their activities/product is a savvy Web2.0 move. We get busted by some damn blogger and our competition rat us out to the peelers.

Then what? We get named and shamed and our reputation is forever sullied on Google (see below for an example prepared earlier). Not good — but that describes what happens now. Under this bold new law, what will change?

Will businesses be taken to court? or the PR firms that represent them? Possibly. Who takes the fall? The client or the flack? Will it stop the practice? I can’t see it happening. There will always be unscrupulous types willing to shill, and flacks who either cross the line (often through ignorance more than design) or ignore it altogether.

There are laws in place in many jurisdictions designed to protect consumers from their own cupidity. It is hard to see this one contributing anything more than wasted court time and longer lunches for the lawyers.

It strikes me as a case of legislators keen to act on something that they probably don’t fully understand yet. Or, worse, keen to be seen to be doing something.

…and in New Zealand?

Of course, we have seen this thing happen here in Aotearoa. Google Ticketek and –surprise– there, on the first page of results, is this link to a BoingBoing story on their lame attempt at sockpuppetry. Note that this ran in 2004 and is still in the top returns page. The damage is permanent.

I’ll leave it to Alan, the enterprising blogger who caught the Ticketek employee with her hand well and truly up the puppet’s, um, cavity, to sum the whole mess up:

Your ignorance in these matters is amusing and sad and unfortunately appears par for the course with your company. Your rather ill-advised comment further reinforces the lack of respect I have Ticketek and further demonstrates why your website – and your business – should be avoided as much as possible.

Have a nice day.

Wikipedia defines astroturfing as:

formal public relations (PR) campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the “AstroTurf” (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate “fake grassroots,” or sometimes “fake environmentalism.”

And, I know you will be shocked to learn -as I was, this practice is surprisingly commonplace. Walmart, the largest retailer in the US, has recently been outed for this sort of dodgy campaign.

They cunningly sent up a blog purporting to be the record of a couple of ‘ordinary Americans’ travelling in a motor home across the US, stopping in Walmart parking lots. Yeah, killer material.

Now, I am not sure what tipped people off to the fact that this was a stunt (other than the content of the blog), but what is really interesting is that the genius behind this “cutting-edge” marketing ploy (at least I imagine that is how it was sold to the Walmart execs) is a long time PR guru who has his own blog.

Does this strike you as odd? Here is a guy who blogs himself, but was insufficiently savvy to realize that this venture was, to use the technical term, a really stupid idea. Of course the ruse would be seen through. Of course it would be traced back to the PR firm. It’s Walmart, people! They are not exactly a low-profile, under-the-radar sort of organisation, are they?

This is a textbook example of applying old models of thinking about public afffairs and communications to new media. And guess what? They just don’t work. A blog, as the PR guru should know, is a specific sort of channel that is defined, in part, by the wider community of bloggers, the ‘blogosphere.’ It is not a simple case of signing on to WordPress and spruiking your wares. There are conventions to observe, like, for example:

• be honest
• allow comments, so it is a discussion
• don’t fill it with the corporate orthodoxy
• engage people

Now PR guru-guy has been blogging since September 2004, which pretty much puts him up-there in the early adopter stakes, but the fact that he still cooked up, or approved, this lame campaign suggests that he hasn’t really grasped the fundamentals of the new media.

And there is a lesson here for all of us: yes, blogs are cool; they are a channel that we all should be aware of and understand, just don’t go rushing out and launching a blog for your agency without giving it a great deal of considered thought. In fact, the question you should really be asking is: why should (insert agency name here) be blogging? Not: why not?

UPDATE

Russell Brown links to this story about Roche’s astroturfing over Herceptin. It sort of makes PR guru-guy above look like a dilettante…