When agencies try to sell clients on social media strategies, we have to do something called "solution selling". It's a bit of a catch-22. To be able to prove your voodoo tactics are going to work, you have to show them that you've already successfully used them for someone else. In a media environment that changes daily, and in which being first means everything, this is kind of an issue.
So I guess that's how temptation got the better of Jung von Matt — or so it seems.
According to Ads of The World's Ivan Raszl, this video case study by JVM, for mattress maker Lullaland, features blog mentions and Tweets that simply never happened:
For Ivan's part, he brings up the screencap of a post he supposedly made, but did not:
He then goes through the archives of every other blog referenced, and can't find those either. Even the Tweets are questionable.
If true, this is a pretty serious breach of social media karma. And odd, too, because JVM hardly need the publicity.
How would you feel if, as a client, someone tried to pull something like this on you. And how would you feel if you were misrepresented as a blogger?
Ivan says, on Facebook, "I don't mind as a blogger, but I do mind as a viewer."
I'm pretty pissed as both. Although as Dabitch on Adland points out, "This story after all, will ensure that everyone in the adblog world spends an afternoon talking about a shit spambot 'campaign'. Well played?"
I actually watched it. It's hard to imagine how to spin this one, other than saying "the creator's family has asked for privacy during his time in rehab."
ReplyDeleteThe CAPTCHA for my last comment as "materess" - maybe that's their new social media campaign. :)
ReplyDeleteThere actually is a plan afoot to use CAPTCHA as advertising, David: http://www.adscaptcha.com/
ReplyDeleteThe case study had holes in it before people figured out the content was fake.
ReplyDeleteFirst thing's first: "...people twitter hash-tag Goodnight..."? No they don't, they tweet. Twitter is the noun, tweet is the verb. Second, I don't think people would actually lay in bed and play their Lullaland lullaby to rock them softly to sleep.
Or maybe I'm just mad because I can't believe someone would actually go to such great lengths to fake a case study...
-Kyla