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Poll - viral/stealth marketing
Grunties
Member Posts: 859
For those unfamiliar with the term, stealth marketing refers to an advertising technique where an employee of a company joins a community under the guise of a regular joe and promotes a product through posts/talking with potential customers, without the customers knowing they are being marketed to.
Though any business could certainly do this with their product, this is mmorpg.com after all so think of it in terms of developers of mmorpgs and the boards here that you frequent. Would learning that a particular company had stealth marketers on these boards affect your opinion of that company? What if it was of a company you hate? What if it was of a company you love?
Please vote and share your thoughts 
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
Comments
Its also known here at least as Viral Marketing SOE is well known for this.
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Retired from: Neocron, Everquest, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, RF Online and Final Fantasy VII
Currently Playing : EvE Online.
When you have a bad game, there's only one thing that can sell it: hype. So companies employ such methods to trick people into buying said game.
I therefore believe that stealth marketing is the desperate act of a company of hackstrying to make a quick buck.
I think it's perfectly ok. Btw, WoW rocks. Buy it now!
On a serious side, I would find any company doing so (and I'm thinking of an organised effort, not a single dev using his spare time here because he figured it was a good idea) completely silly unless they're small and desperate. The money isn't here on these forums (or any other MMOG forum), but in the big masses reading their regular newspapers and news sites. If people want to do any effective stealth marketing they ought to aim for them, not us here.
I have seen many threads over the years of people calling others out on viral marketing, but naturally everyday posters have no real way of confirming this other than having a strong belief.
It is an interesting thing to imagine if the moderators of a given board, who usually are able to see the ip#'s of every poster, were to notice that the ip# they get from developers strangely seem to match or be close to the ip's of other users in the system. Due to the organization of business networks, ips across a whole building tend to be similar, so one would think it would not be difficult to identify them in this way. Of course, thats assuming a viral marketer was working from within the building and not another location.
What do you think the reaction would be if a mod let the community know that a particular poster was actually an employee of a company? Would there maybe be an intial outcry and then everything goes back to normal, or would word get around and there would be a serious impact on their business? Someone above mentioned SOE but many people already have a low opinion of them anyway.... I'm particularly thinking about the other guys who might not have a bad rap at the moment, could they have much to lose if they became known as viral advertisors, or would it just be business as usual and no one would really care?
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
I don't know what you're talking about. but PLAY WURMONLINE ORELSE.
if a company were to be found out for this I'd be extremely pissed off at them even if it doesn't affect me.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
to the poster of the IP info reply ...
thats hard to judge if they are really an employee or not.
for example im sitting at a coffee shop but they are really close to an IBM facility and the IBM public employee wi-fi is MUCH better than the public coffee house one so im ID'd as an IBM IP addy at the moment. do i work for IBM ?
nope.
so that could lead to trouble if someone takes something i say here and posts it somewhere else as an IBM employee said "whatever" b/c of an IP thats more convienent to use than the other one avail when sitting in a cafe.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
That's why you form your own opinion instead of a generic one from someone you don't know. It's also the reason word of mouth can work with friends - you know who friends work for in most cases. I can't blame em for trying anymore than I blame fast food commercials on tv that try to make me believe that eating fat ridden food is going to make me want to skateboard or jump in the air or that their salad will make me a metaphysical guru because it comes with healthier components. :P
How do we know you aren't a viral marketer polling people about viral marketing??? Huh? What do you have to say for yourself... I've only ever experienced this one time and it was incredibly obvious (but it was a rather unique situation). I just assume that most companies participate in this kind of deception because they can and it's not illegal. I doubt many think of their moral obligation to their fans. It wouldn't surprise me even if it were a company I love.
I think the forums for a game have to have a certain style and maturity to them for this kind of thing to work. For instance...nobody's getting anything accomplished on the World of Warcraft forums.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
I concur with you. The only problem is that SOE, as in so many other dealings with its customers, is actually extremely bad at it.
To show you precisely what I mean, have a look at the second-to-last post in the following page from the SWG forum when an SOE rep forgets he is posing as a neutral, 3rd party player;
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1667088#1667088
On the flip side of this coin, I have to say I actually enjoy positive viral marketting - like I Love Bees. If you make advertisements fun, attractive, a game, etc - it's great in my book.
Laura "Taera" Genender
Community Manager
MMORPG.com
Yes, but I think the OP's point was against 'stealth marketing' - in other words, advertising that impersonates impartial, supposedly independent comment. Rather than spiel provided by some forty-fiveyear-old PR stooge in a plastic tie posting under the name 'L337dooodFTW1989'
Yes, but I think the OP's point was against 'stealth marketing' - in other words, advertising that impersonates impartial, supposedly independent comment. Rather than spiel provided by some forty-fiveyear-old PR stooge in a plastic tie posting under the name 'L337dooodFTW1989'
Nod, but he also mentioned viral marketting too
Laura "Taera" Genender
Community Manager
MMORPG.com
I voted no, as someone who has been accused of all sorts before, I expect people to make their own mind up about what they see - with or without the gloss on (if its there at all)
Most people who visit these boards have an idea already of basic games, thru unbiased news reported.
Yes, but I think the OP's point was against 'stealth marketing' - in other words, advertising that impersonates impartial, supposedly independent comment. Rather than spiel provided by some forty-fiveyear-old PR stooge in a plastic tie posting under the name 'L337dooodFTW1989'
Nod, but he also mentioned viral marketting too
Point taken. To be frank though - and speaking from the viewpoint of someone within the advertising industry - most mmo companies advertise their games with little creativity and, hard to believe but true, a really rigid attitude to the medium on which their business is founded - the internet itself. i suppose most of their creavity is focused on their games.The only clever, sharp ads I have seen for a mmo recently are the current half-face Eve ads.
There's a saying that comes to mind, hmm...
I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
If I heard about proven occurrence, yes I would consider it bad manners from the company and it would impact my view of the company. Tho I would find pointing fingers or accusing someone equally bad mannered within the community.
Subscribtions: EVE, SWTOR WOW, WAR, DDO, VG, AOC, COV, FFXI, GW, RFO, Aion
+plenty of F2P, betas, trials
Female Dwarf player: WOW, VG, WAR, DDO
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Due to the recent economic crisis and spending cuts the light at the end of the tunnel was turned off. Sincerely, God.
Not to mention, it would be a very stupid move for a viral marketer to draw attention to the fact that he was a viral marketer by making a post like this one. If anything they should want to stay off the suspicion radar and focus only their goal. But maybe I'm using reverse psychology on you
But seriously. I tried my best to keep the poll impartial. I don't think I insinuated any answer was the right answer in my wording, or make one side seem 'wrong', so as not to skew the results. Though you can probably guess by just the fact that I brought the question up at all, I am against it. But without adequate means to prove anything one way or another, and understandably an unwillingness for moderators to track and inform people of this kind of stuff anyway, I have no misconceptions about whether or not this will become anything but a brief philosophical topic for discussion, and my own amusement.
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/02/10
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/25
Yep, it's crappy. On the other hand, if they just logged on, made it clear who they were, and talked about it, they would get tremendous response. Talking to a dev about a game gets all sorts of people interested.
As for IPs, there are companies that specialize in astroturfing that would have IPs that are not near the main company, and probably get changed (or spoofed) regularly, to appear like normal users.
Lastly, holy crap, that Conan sig is huge. It's almost a meg!
I think its despicable. Lying to a customer is never justified. And I would love for nothing more than mod intervention to reveal who these people are. But its only a dream as long as the internet is anonymous.
Though its pretty easy to spot them, especially if they are bad at it. If you see someone that spends all of their time doing nothing but making posts that look more like advertisements than actually giving input, you are onto something. I'm not talking about the occasional positive thing here and there, everyone does that, i mean hours and hours every single day gathering together news items, making hype encouraging graphics, and trolling other game boards trying to dehype them. You don't see behavior like that unless they are mentally unstable or on someones payroll. A pity marketing trash like that can't really get called out for what it is. A lot of peoples perceptions about games would change if they were.
But as someone said, any company that resorts to this is probably really desperate for customers, and wouldn't be a threat anyway. But still, on principal I wish it could be stopped.
I think it makes for poor posting. Crappy fanboy nonsense is bad enough without professional fanboys chipping up.
I've caught SOE and CCP both actively targeting these boards in the past. I pretty much applaud the ingenuity of the advertising agent.
How a game has been marketed makes very little difference to me as to whether or not I will buy it or how much I will pay for it, other than alerting me to it in the first place. But given that I scan the new release schedules amost daily, I don't exactly need a lot in the way of alerts.
Wildly exitable hyped fanboy threads and remarks generally get me on guard for any game. If idiots love it that much without even having played it, the playerbase isn't going to be very intelligent, and the sam is true for those for whoim all faults are forgiven or left unmentioned.
Any customer base unwilling to hold it's providers to account or unwilling to demand higher standards from them is gagging for poor quality and miserable service. Professional fanboy or just an amateur, your post dissuades me from trying the game you espose and it encourages the manufacturers to be relaxed about their work.
In marketing terms. and as a one time marketing man for a video games company, it makes perfect sense to me. As a long term gamer with an eye to the future of gaming over my lifetime, I think it encourages poor results from the producers of games. If peer reviews can be bought rather than earnt, games companies no longer have any need to produce quality products. An industry unable to be held to account by it's customers must surely lose sight of it's standards long term.