Brand shills and the brand death spiral
The Consumerist recently reported on the alleged use of brand shills in online forums used by computer gamers. Brand shills are individuals paid to assume false identities or personas, and then tout particular products in the guise of a trusted community member.
This practice isn’t new. In fact, a number of marketing services companies offer it to their clients, hiring freelancers as the shills. It is a kissing cousin to click fraud, only more pernicious, because it willingly subverts community trust.
One name for this practice is “strategic seeding of viral assets.” However, there is nothing “strategic” about it. Nor is it “seeding” in any sense of the term.
It’s really a form of poison. All it seeds is a company’s brand demise.
Companies that hire brand shills are telling the world that they have no confidence in their own brand. Brand shills are part of the brand death spiral, that last-ditch attempt to “make the numbers” by subverting a company’s own brand community.
Using brand shills never works for long, if it works at all. Once the damage is done, with the brand on one side and truth on the other, there’s slim chance of recovery.
Let’s say it again: brand . . . death . . . spiral.
