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.
The most fake thing about the campaign was that they masqueraded that there was actually a good idea there.
Telstra biggest social media team doing the worst work. It’s all pathetic. Enjoying some of Vodafone’s work.
Minor issue this, surely. Agency was just trying to be creative.
Nice work on digging out the Alexa stats though
fake is the new real
An ATL agency spoofing their Interactive creds?
Surely not.
cool goat..:))
Maybe nice “creative” …but does it sell more ads on Trading Post.?
Grief to profit ratio: 50:1
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??
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.
trading post IS in Nielsen Market Intelligence – it comes up under BigPond Trading Post with all the other BigPond stuff
i’d be careful claiming stuff like this, mumbrella. wouldn’t want anyone to examine your blog too closely
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”
Fake blog huh? That’s not anything interesting.
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?
lol, Camille. Nooooooooooooooo. Someone faking it on Mumbrella??!!!?? Whatever is the world coming to?
Oi Chris,
Stop bringing year-on-year into this. It ruins the skewed stats.
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.
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!
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.
Do you think comments 9 and 11 are from the agency or the client?
Who’s the goat now?
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!