Invasion of the Bodysnatchers

By Mike Davison

This recent article in the Orlando Times [link broken] is indicative of a concerning view of the WOM marketing industry. It actually sounds more like The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers – the 50′s horror classic where a local community gets infiltrated by alien duplicates. BzzAgent is again the press whipping boy – perhaps unsurprisingly given the company’s current newsworthiness following the substantial VC injection.

From what I can see, BzzAgent have worked really hard to open up their business to the world and  have issued a code of ethics to help police the conduct of its agents who are required to be honest and open with their opinions. I guess it doesn’t help that the word ‘agent’ is so loaded but that’s another argument – and certainly no justification for this mass conspiracy rhetoric. 

Having read the article, and knowing how all industry voices are pulling so hard for ethical standards, I think I know where the real obfuscation lies.

For more on word of mouth ethics see the WOMMA site or read the 1000heads take here.

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Brought into the world on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 and filed under Uncategorized.

  • Anonymous

    Hi
    the link for Orlando Times article does not work anymore.
    regards
    pH

  • http://www.1000heads.com blogadmin

    Thanks for the heads up. Must have been archived although a quick site search on the Orlando Sentinel doesn’t bring it up either.