Executive Summary (with updates 23/06/06):

JWT (a marketing firm) and ‘The Huffington Post’ (a popular blog) have teamed up to market and promote a series of advertisments. On June 20th I received an email sugesting the readers of this blog would enjoy one of the JWT advertisements. On June 20th the YesButNoButYes blog received a very similar email suggesting that their readers would enjoy one of the JWT ads promoted at The Huffington Post. The marketing dept at the Huffington Post is run by a well known viral marketing pioneer. All emails came from the same IP. At the same time, comments on the JWT ads are limited to only the positive variety (with the approval rate estimated for some ads at about 3%). In the latest twist, a comment by Val over at the YesButNoButYes blog brags about how much more popular The Huffington Post when compared with YesButNoButYes. This comment originates from the same IP as all the emails sugesting we promote the JWT ads as well as the short reply to this story by Jonah Peretti. All this ads up to viral marketing Foie Gras.

Fulltext

Yesterday I received a message from E.F., pasted below:

I know your site and I came across a video clip that I think your readers would appreciate. It’s part of a series of creative ads that JWT has taken out at www.huffingtonpost.com/jwt. I thought this JetBlue ad would be cool to show people because it’s funny and it describes traveling experiences really well.
Check it out at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jwt/jet_blue_neelman.html

Yours,
E.F.

Fair enough request, so I followed the link and watched the commercial. It was fine, nothing special. Then I checked out the Huffintonpost main page and where I discovered that the commercial I had just viewed was infact a paid ad. View the screenshot of the homepage below, and click for the full res version.

I emailed E.F the following email (expecting no response):

Greetings E.F.,

Although I like the ad… I’m unsure about two things. So, two questions for you: Do you run or operate a blog or website of some kind? And, are you affiliated in anyway with the huffingtonpost, jet blue, or jwt?

Kirk

While waiting for a response I started doing a little research. It turns out that ad firm JWT bought all the advertising on the Huffington Post website for one week (an ad term called ‘roadblocking’). It has been cited that Jonah Peretti, a partner and technology director for the Huffington Post, has teamed up with JWT to create some ‘viral marketing’ to promote JWT’s new ads.

“People often ask me, ‘how do you make something viral?’ ” Mr. Peretti said. “The truth is, you just make something good. That doesn’t make something viral, but some of them will strike a nerve.” [source]

Then I ran across this article in the Guardian, “Blogosphere for Sale”:

America’s oldest and largest advertising agency, JWT, is spending thousands of its clients’ dollars in a high profile bid to bag the cachet of advertising on a blog. It hopes the Huffington Post’s readers will ping the ads around the globe as fast as you can say “viral marketing success”.[source]

This fits with the title of the page where JWT’s ads reside on the huffingtonpost website, “Social Advertising.” So this begs the question, am I being gamed? Has someone representing JWT or the huffington post contacted me in the hopes that I help create ‘buzz’?

Thats when a reply arrived:

Dear Kirk -

I am interning this summer at the huffingtonpost; I liked the ad that we are running and I thought you guys might like it too.

Elias

I sent him another email that said I’d be happy to write about the ad to which he responded that he’d answer any questions I have. So I hit him up with this question:

Elias,

I have to admit that it is very ’suspicious’ that an intern from the Huffington post emails me out of the blue to recommend an advertisement currently running on the huffingtonpost proper. Especially disconcerting is that the huffington post employs Jonah Peretti, a man described as a viral marketing guru. Add in the fact that the ads themselves run from a page entitled ‘Social Advertising’ and something trips my spidey sense.

I guess I’m troubled because the vast majority of my site’s visitors come looking for things other than travel (even though my website could be categorized as travel and has travel related metakeywords) so I find it strange that in the initial email, you thought that my visitors would be interested in a travel ad.

This gets me to thinking: are you purposely trying to generate buzz about these ads?

Cheers,

Kirk

A day later, and still no response from Elias. One possible conclusion is that Elias was astroturfing for his employer, the Huffingtonpost. Astroturfing seeks the appearance of genuine independent public reaction to (in this case) advertising even though, in reality, the reaction is carefully orchestrated by marketing firms.

In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals. [source]

Another possible conclusion is that Elias is a genuine fan of this website. He states, “I know your site…”, and then talks about my ‘readers’ who might like to view the ad. This website is constantly evolving, while I travelled South East Asia I posted my diaries about my experiences there. Some crazy stuff. But that is not why people come to maxpower. The amount of people per day who come to maxpower seeking information about travel can be counted on one hand.

If Elias really did know my site than I don’t think he would have suggested that my readers would enjoy the ad about travel. So, I’m still leaning towards the astroturfing conclusion.

This conclusions is also also supported by what I deem to be astroturfing on the Huffingtonpost website in the JWT (the marketing firm) section. On the video ad I was directed to by Elias, people are asked for their comments in regards to the commercial. Here is a sample:

These ads actually made me think, “How come I don’t fly Jet Blue?” Is it REALLY as good as it seems? If it is, how come Jet Blue hasn’t cleaned Delta’s clocks? Delta is the worst airline in the sky.
-Ellen M. 06.17.06 [source]

Each user supplied comment is given its own unique comment number and url. The comment shown above is number 14 as shown in its url: www.huffingtonpost.com/jwt/jet_blue_neelman.html#comment-14. Each of the advertisements done by JWT on the Huffington post has its own comment numbering system allowing the clever deduction of how many comments JWT has received.

Consider, the latest comment about the JetBlue commercial approved and shown on the website is 88. This means that there have been at least 88 comments about the advertisements that JWT deems worthy of showing on the web. There are a total of 8 comments published out of 88 submitted. Coincidentally, the 8 selected from the 88 (or about 9% of all comments) are positive.

Does this mean that over 90% of the people who took the time to give feedback about the ad suggested that they didn’t like the ad in someway? Or just the other 90% of user comments weren’t positive enough?

I left a legitimate negative comment saying effectively that I didn’t like the ad and concisely and eloquently said why. I did this yesterday. It hasn’t shown up yet although comments made today have. Coincidence? I think not. As an aside, the Scruffs Hardcore commercial has only 3 published comments and at least 89 submitted resulting in just 3 percent of all comments submitted about the ad actually showing up. Sad.

Mr. Peretti (viral marketing mastermind and huffingtonpost employee) is quoted above on the secret of viral marketing: “The truth is, you just make something good..” That might be true, but one thing you should not do is try to stuff a corporations vision down consumer throats — viral marketing foie gras. Your methods are too rich and fatty, not that hard to spot, it look bad when you’ve been discovered. And really… using an intern and leaving the comment numbering online shouldn’t be something that a top ad firm does, its so verifiable. You shouldn’t be transparent and try astroturfing at the same time, it just doesn’t work.

Incidentally, I could find no record of an ‘Elias’ working as an intern at the Huffington Post. It could mean there is simply nothing to find and Elias has hidden whatever online identity he might have, or it could mean that Elias doesn’t actually exist. It really doesn’t matter.

The point is, viral marketing only work when the people don’t know they are ’sick’ with your virus. Whats more, the irony is good old fashioned marketing only costs 10 dollars on MaxPower — I’d have been happy to help launch your marketing blitz, but not when I feel that I am being co-opted in some way.

Update 1: A few hours later…

A few hours after this post was published I recieved an email from Jonah Peretti. Here it is:

Hi,

Elias sent me your post about “astroturfing”. For the record, Elias is an intern at the Huffington Post and was sending links to a few of the blogs he likes. He is upfront about what he is doing and he certainly did not expect you to link to the JetBlue video unless you really like it.

I stand by my quote in the NYT — you have to make something good to make it viral — and even clever attempts at astroturfing don’t work. Elias thought you would link to the ad if you liked it and ignore his message if you don’t.
He certainly was not trying to trick you.

Jonah

Update 2: One day later…

It turns out that another blog received a remarkably similar email to the one I got. Over at YesButNoButYes, proudly displays the following email:

Hi! I’ve known about your site for a while now and I came across a video clip that I think your readers would appreciate. It is part of a series of creative ads that JWT has taken out at www.huffingtonpost.com/jwt. In particular, I think you would enjoy this hilarious, sexy advertisement for scruffs clothing (hardcore). tell me what you think!

I don’t think that its a stretch to think that there was / is a concerted effort to ‘engage’ the blogosphere to help generate ‘buzz’ about ‘the product’. As an aside, I found the ‘Hardcore’ commercial very boring and didn’t watch it all the way through. There have now been at least 106 user supplied comments of which 4 have been deemed worthy of posting.

Update 3: Two days later…

Over at the YesButNoButYes blog, the following comment by Val has been posted:

LOL that is a funny email. But in fairness to Huffpost, their alexa ranking (web traffic counter) is 1251, this site’s is 56,664 (lower number the better). and the ads are also pretty funny…

It turns out that the comment by Val originates from the same IP as all of the emails MaxPower has recieved from the intern, the note from Jonah Peretti, and the “I’ve known about your site…” email sent to the YesButNoButYes blog. YesButNoButYes also provides a little further background on this story and the current love-in between JWT and the Huffington Post, its a good read.

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