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The Software Big Oil's PR Firm Uses To "Convert Average Citizens" 110

Posted by samzenpus from the made-just-for-you dept.
merbs writes The CEO of the world's largest PR firm has a policy when it comes to campaigns that focus on the environment. "We do not work with astroturf groups and we have never created a website for a client with the intent to deny climate change," Richard Edelman wrote in a blog post in August. That may actually turn out to be true. Technically. Edelman may not work with astroturf groups. Instead, it appears to prefer to build them itself, from the ground up, using sophisticated proprietary software platform designed to "convert" advocates and then "track" their behavior.
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The Software Big Oil's PR Firm Uses To "Convert Average Citizens" More

The Software Big Oil's PR Firm Uses To "Convert Average Citizens"

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  • Their job is to lie by saying things that may be true, technically. (At least when they're dealing with entrenched interests working against the public good to maximize profit.)

  • What? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jiro ( 131519 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @06:20PM (#48421965)

    This is the same thing that every company big enough to do public relations at all does, except it's being described using inflammatory terminology.

    • You've received emails/calls from Verizon, etc. saying you're not posting enough about their great service?

    • Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by plover ( 150551 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @06:39PM (#48422093) Homepage Journal

      This is the same thing that every company big enough to do public relations at all does, except it's being described using inflammatory terminology.

      That's what I was thinking. If they are getting real people to agree with their position and sign up with their on-line site, how would that make their individual choices illegitimate? How could that be painted as "astroturf" when it's clearly legitimate support?

      Look at the other side. If I worked for a railroad that operated thousands of tanker cars that ship oil across the country, I might go to the stop-the-oil-pipeline.org site and pledge my support. As a railroad, I burn thousands of gallons of oil to ship millions of gallons of crude. I have no interest in protecting the environment, yet here I am, signing up. It's not because I'm an environmentalist, it's because I don't want the competition to take away my business. Where is the story claiming this makes the environmentalists an astroturf organization? There isn't one, because it's not.

      Why isn't this story looking into the CRM software in use by the environmentalists? Perhaps their bias is a bit too evident.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > Why isn't this story looking into the CRM software in use by the environmentalists? Perhaps their bias is a bit too evident.

        Because "environmentalists" aren't a consortium of companies with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and if they were that would be fucking great. Imagine an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars with a core principle to not fuck up the planet. We can only hope.

        You sound like the kind of person who says things like "why isn't there a white history month?" So focu

    • Exactly, its not like the renewables lobby doesn't use similar PR tactics, or any other lobby for that matter.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )
        Having worked in the CRM world, I agree. And their own article does, too, but only for one sentence:

        While it sounds uniquely sinister coming from an oil company, this software is likely not too far removed from, say, the sort that the Obama team used to identify probable voters or Rite Aid deploys to pigeonhole shoppers.

        Then, it's back to the oil bashing. Which is fine is one sense: If you don't like oil, you're free to bash it. But this is a stupid thing to bash them about.

  • Only works with clients you like? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...we have never created a website for a client with the intent to deny climate change"...

    This was said to a pro-global warming group. The CEO of the world's largest PR firm has a policy of saying what the client wants to hear....

  • ...and Greenpeace... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cirby ( 2599 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @06:29PM (#48422033)

    Does the same. They hire the same sort of people, pay the same sort of money, and use the same tactics (and many worse ones).

    Except they're getting all whiny because it's not working for them on the Keystone XL thing, so they're trying the old "those evil, mind-controlling oil companies" story on a different class of public relations targets.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The oil companies hired the same legal folks that rep'd the tobacco companies in the 90's. And lied. They had John Boehner on the floor of the senate handing out checks, something you'd think would have ended his career.

      Now the folks that represent the oil companies are hiring ex-psy ops guys from the military (Pittsburg Post-Gazette). It's illegal to use psy ops on the American public, so why would they need these guys?

      I'm not sure what tactics Greenpeace uses that compare? Using lonely polar bears to stir

    • @cirby: "...and Greenpeace... Does the same."

      Do you any evidence from verifiable third party sources for that?

    • Didn't Keystone XL die in senate the other day?

  • Astroturfing is the increasingly popular tactic wherein corporations sponsor front groups or manufacture the appearance of grassroots support to simulate a genuine social movement that is rallying for goals in line with their profit motive. end quote. it's Everyone (see Bloomberg's Everytown), not just corporations. so the definition given for Astroturfing is designed for the reporter's PR motive.

  • Weird reversal (Score:5, Informative)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday November 19, 2014 @06:44PM (#48422129) Homepage Journal

    I recall reading something a few years back (but I can't find a link, so take this with a grain of salt) where Amazon was reported to have or at least claimed to have very high employee satisfaction and/or safety. However, the only reason they do so is because the vast majority of their warehouses are staffed and managed by third parties, who work their employees quite hard for low wages. Because it's the third parties that do the hiring and management, technically they aren't Amazon employees, and so aren't included in metrics (internal or external.)

    I'm sure other companies have spouted the truthy line of "We do not astroturf" (because we hire third party marketing companies, tell them simply to "improve our image", and they astroturf for us.) This seems like another type of that shell game, where they say "We do not astroturf (the software we buy from companies to improve our image astroturfs for us.)"

    How long until they start hiring botnets to generate pseudo-random favorable posts? "We do not astroturf (the hackers we found on craigslist get the internet to astroturf for us.)"

  • And it's working like a charm... Good move fellas... You're guaranteed a packed house...

  • Astroturfing;
    Paying people/companies to make statements they do not believe to support a cause.

    Not Astroturfing;
    Convincing someone you view is correct and providing a venue to display these actual honest views.

    Labeling something astroturfing does not mean it really is astroturfing. Why shouldn't a company be able to show statements made by people who are not paid to make them? The environmental lobby does it all the time.

    • I agree. Showing statements that you haven't paid for is quite appropriate.

      But tell me, do you think, for instance, having Dr. Roy Spencer being paid by the Koch Brothers to make anti-AGW statements that don't even have any backing in any peer reviewed research he's ever done fit within those ethical lines?

      • Astroturfing deals with opinions and not facts. What the Koch Brothers might be doing is just "muddying the waters".

  • Cue the chucklefucks arguing about obamacare or global warming as if it were remotely relevant, the out-of-the-woodwork fake right-wing ACs complaining about "environmentalist whackos", shaggy dog story nonsense filler comments, etc. Paid oil shills: the same scripts every time, guaranteed, from the same minimum wage losers.

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