Deep Jive Interests

Now, I’ve got to feel sorry for Edelman. While the blogosphere’s spotlight and baleful eye was cast on their less than transparent doings on behalf of Wal-mart, it turns out that another Fortune 500 player in the conusmer business has also been flogging the blogosphere with fake blogs — McDonalds.

Courtesy of the Media Post, and the Consumerist which broke the story on all Hallow’s Eve (which sadly was no happy treat on blogging’s behalf), it seems like at least two fake blogs were created to promote McDonald’s latest Monopoly promotion efforts.

One, 4railroads, had a Stanley Smith trying to get all four railroad pieces, featuring youtube clips of the said guy going to absurd lengths (whoooo — edgy viral media!), and another, Mcdmillionwinner, by a 2004 Monopoly winner named Marcia Schroeder (oddly enough), who waxed poetic about how she loved McDonalds.

They’ve currently been taken down, and Google’s cache of these sites has been obliterated.

As the consumerist points out:

The blogs are supposed to be unrelated, but the images were hosted on the same server, 4railroads.com. While Stanley’s blog URL is 4railroads.blogspot.com, the URL 4railroads.com redirects to Marcia’s blog.

Moreover, it points to a press release by a firm called JSH&A, released on Oct 19, suggesting how far some real Monopoly players go to win:

For an inside look at how previous winners are reaping the MONOPOLY awards and to see just how far consumers will go to win big at McDonald’s, visit http://www.4railroads.com .

MediaPost does the legwork, and finds:

Representatives for McDonald’s did not return phone calls. Kristin Zanini of JSH&A Public Relations in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. confirmed that her agency did create the blogging strategy behind Schroeder and “Stanley Smith,” and that Smith was a fictitious creation.

Zanini asserted, however, that Schroeder personally wrote all the entries on her blog, including the one that reads: “Some nights, we skip cooking dinner at home just to take a trip to McDonald’s so we can play Monopoly. Thank goodness they have lots of variety on the menu to choose from.” Zanini would not provide contact information for Schroeder, however, and attempts to independently track her down were unsuccessful.

So in summary what we have is McDonald’s hiring a PR firm to produce at least one genuinely fake blog, and one probably-fake blog, as with Ms. Schroeder no one can verify that she exists — probably at the same time as Wal-Mart’s Wal-Marting across America, or shortly thereafter. And, amazingly enough, the Press Release was issued about the week after the blogging’s PR community noticed Edelman’s Flogging Shennanigans, and a whole three days after Richard Edelman issued his own mea culpa on the situation, and a two days after BusinessWeek wrote a story in the mainstream press.

Maybe they were concerned no one was paying attention, or that people wouldn’t care as much since there wasn’t the same ironic blogging evangelization connection with JSH&A as Edelman; or perhaps, once the blogs were up, the work was done and paid for, they felt they were taking a calculated risk on capital spent.

Who knows?

All I know is that Madison Avenue has finally found the blogosphere, and has clearly found it acceptable to use it as a playground, petrie dish, and public toilet all in one.

And you know what? Fine — if seems like all physical spaces have been whored out commercialized (public toilets anyone), clearly virtual ones are fair game (can anyone say “Crayon”?).

What I’d like to know is — what is the real ROI on Fake blogs? Is it merely an arm waving exercise in branding that can potentially certainly lead to brand tarnishment if its found out?

And, what is the ROI compared to the recent campaign by Wendy’s — where although viral videos had the appearance of being fake, once you followed the breadcrumb trail, it was quite apparent who the parent company was. Somehow the wink-wink, post-cynical “I know you’re watching and know we know that you know that we’re a giant multi-national corporation” made that one seem a little more genuine.

[disclosure -- I like Wendy's frosties]

Lastly, I think with this flogging “outing”, I probably won’t be blogging about it any further detail; its a little unfair to Edelman sure, but quite frankly with the second large multi-national hiring a PR firm to create fake blogs, I think that flogs are no longer “news”.

In spite of WOMMA’s putting Edelman on review, I think we’ll probably see a helluva lot more of them in the future — and they’ll probably go to greater lengths to make sure they’re not outed.