A Slashdot article about a somewhat deceptive advertising campaign coins an excellent term:
Astroturf (As·tro·Turf)
- A campaign artificially made to appear as though it is a "grassroots" movement;
Usage: "Sony has hired actors in effort to build an astroturf campaign for their latest product."
Brilliant.
This reminds me of the time Canada's New Democratic Party did a survey to find out what its members where looking for in a party. It turned out they were looking for honest moral leadership. I wonder if they decided to act on the results.
Comments
Peter Rukavina - August 2, 2002 12:42 am
The move by Sony-Ericson is obviously a direct rip-off of the Capital Commission's secret practice of inserting "Fathers and Mothers of Confederation" casually onto the lawn of Province House and the Coles Building in Charlottetown to sell croquet sets. I see them there every morning playing their croquet, making it look all natural and all -- sneaky bastards. We've all known for years about the collusion between the Capital's mandarins and the fat cats in the croquet industry, but nobody's brave enough to break the silence.
Steven Garrity - August 2, 2002 1:44 am
I must have left a sarcasm tag open...
I'm not really surprised by the campaign - Sony has done something similar before. It's the use of the term, Astroturf campaign - gold jerry! gold!
tomas - August 5, 2002 3:39 pm
The usage of the word astroturf in this context has been around for years, it wasn't coined by slashdot. The earliest reference I can find via google is 1995.
Steven Garrity - August 5, 2002 3:40 pm
tomas: I wondered if that might be the case - but posted anyhow. I figured I'd be corrected if I were wrong.
Respect to whoever it was that original coined the term.
Paul - August 6, 2002 8:00 pm
I wondered about the term when I spotted the Slashdot article too. A complete definition can be found in the Jargon file<blockquote>astroturfing
n.
The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant `concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (astroturf is fake grass; hence the term). This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company.
This backfired horribly, angering a number of state attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with plans to join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending Microsoft on the net for the accusation "You're just astroturfing!". </blockquote>