Trolling as PR

I'll write a normal how-my-day-went post later, but I had to post about this because I am just so delighted by what I see as a new and subtle shift in the world of online social media.

When people become so cynical that normal commercials stop working, companies turn to social media. Quite often social media campaigns will also fail miserably, because the internet is full of people even more cynical than those who watch TV. See, for example, the campaign to send Pittbull to America's Favorite Walmart (and ended up sending him to a remote Alaskan town with a total population 1/20th the number of "likes" their Walmart received). I always wondered what the next step would be, after social media advertising failed. It turns out, the answer is obvious: use the cynicism of the internet against it. In short: troll them.

First, let me direct your attention to a brilliant and gutsy internet hoax that relied precisely on the internet's finely tuned sense of justice. You may have seen Shell's "social media failure" at http://arcticready.com/social/gallery, where Shell had encouraged people to design a new advertisement for their arctic expansion using their "Let's Go" slogan. Thousands of people posted advertisements with slogans such as: "You Can't Run Your SUV on 'Cute,'" and "Pave the Whales." My personal favorite, "We Still Haven't Noticed We're Being Trolled," is I think the most brilliant example here. Brilliant because it is not, in fact, a Shell website that people are looking at when they scroll through the gallery. What appeared to be an act of complete corporate incompetence is in fact a well orchestrated parody. Go check- most of the links pop up with a redirect message:

Temporary Site Maintenance

Our corporate website is momentarily offline while we add new features as part of our new Let's Go! Arctic campaign. Please check back later.


In the meantime, explore our new Arctic Ready campaign. You will be redirected in five seconds...

Checking this would be simple enough to do, but people will generally go along with something if it comports with their worldview- and that doesn't mean that environmentalist hippies went for this and conservatives saw right through it- it means that the site didn't give off any warning flags and the "campaign" didn't seem like anything all that out of the ordinary for a company to be doing- after all, it was the internet that was "trolling" the company. And that's the brilliance of it- why would anyone question it since it was so obvious and easy to explain what was going on? 


New plan, then- find a way to direct the wrath of the entire internet on your enemies by making the internet think that your enemies are trying to be cool.


Downside- parody is only protected under the law (typically) if a reasonable person would "get" the joke. I don't believe Shell is planning on suing the people who made the site (because it would make them look bad and would probably be spun as Shell suing the people who posted the hilarious arctic advertisements), but other companies might- and then we'll have some interesting lawsuits. 


This is also of interest and related.