Cook, skin, burn

With his gastronomically-peppered definitions for PR speak, Eugene Chong of Reap seemed to want to cook up an epicurean storm - thought Cherisse Beh.

Corporate Trolls, Sock Puppets and Astro Turfing are terms familiar to net-junkies these days but what do they mean to marketers? In the land of consumer generated media, with forums, message boards, Slashdot, and Wikipedia, these are not only treasure troves for information and opinion but lately, deception.

Many corporations these days have been caught red-handed for white-washing their wikis and black-labelling their competitors. Some CEOs even create their own doppelgangers for this purpose. Even in politics and social causes we have seen a rise in lobbyists pulling online stunts just to support their causes, covertly of course.

"Cook the trolls, skin the sock puppets and burn the turfs. Offensive trolls are pests (which must be squashed), the defensive are fakes (which must be exposed) and the irritating - spammers. The sock puppets are usually clones and astro-turfing generally means a fake site. There are many of them, and some companies do these ‘activities' every now and then. Why fake it. There are always better, more cost effective and positive ways to gain attention online", Eugene Chong, IT director at Reap Media Communications says.

He adds that in the short run such campaigns work, but in the long run they can do irrecoverable damage. It is just a matter of time before the corporate trolls are identified, the puppets found and the turf dries.

Net dwellers like honest companies and are willing to forgive. When caught, he advises companies or individuals to come clean, tell the truth and apologise.

"This is not a new phenomena, the IRC era of early 1990's have since moved on to the Truth era (Blogs, facebook, etc) because they know no matter how horrible you look or how terrible your personality is, people out there that will enjoy it and heaps of bored people will give you attention. What the online PR people of today are doing is repeating the same mistakes that the IRC era people have made. Only difference is, they get paid much more."

This issue of online deception serves to highlight the power the consumer today has over corporate messages, and how platforms such as Wikipedia allow them not just to passively consume information but also help police and maintain online justice.