Borkowski/YouTube… Hmm
Posted Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 11:51am in Blogging, Off topic |
PR Week’s Diary piece this week has a quick note on the success of a YouTube video featuring Borkowski PR relocating to new offices. PR Week says (sub required): “Ten of the agency’s staff, plus assorted badgers, robots, and Action Men figures are seen exiting the agency’s old Holborn offices to the sounds of a Benny Hill-style-ditty, piling into a taxi and re-emerging across town in Clerkenwell. Borkowski himself appears at the head of a ’skiing’ conga line.” Woah, cool.
But wait, there’s more.
“Borkowski denies the agency posted the clip on YouTube, but was chuffed when Diary tracked him down: ‘We were stored as a “favourite” by 259 people after 18 hours. It just shows what can be done in a day.’”
Wow! 259 people in 18 hours. That is impressive. You know what happens when you’re ‘favourited’ on YouTube? Yep, you feature prominently on the ‘Most Subscribed To‘ page. No wonder there has been so many views in such a short space of time.
Hold on a second… I’ve just had a look at the subscriber list to the Borkowski video and (forgive me if I’m wrong) there seems to be some members with very dull imaginations. Why they’re all using practically the same username. Let’s see, we have member OPSPL1, OPSPL2, OPSPL3, OPSPL4, OPSPL5, OPSPL6, OPSPL7… I could go on and on. Take a look for yourself.
No wonder it was featured on the ‘Most Subscribed To’ page! Why it looks like someone is cheating the YouTube system! Shock, horror!
But, as the PR Week article says, Borkowski PR deny putting the video on YouTube. I wonder who could have done it then? 
I mean, someone spending literally hours and hours to register as multiple members must think a helluva lot of this particular video. You can watch it here.
technorati tags: borkowski, youtube, gaming+the+system
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20 Comments
Stuart Bruce
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 12:28pm
And all just joined exactly one week ago. And the ‘Movey’ was posted exactly one week ago. Hmm, indeed. Edelman are a good bunch and know when to apologies, let’s lot watch and wait with this one.
Paull Young
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 12:42pm
Great pick up Stephen!
Looks very zany, very professional… and it seems, very fake.
Look at all our YouTube views! We GET IT!
Chris Lake
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 at 4:28pm
Mate, this is too funny. We’ll take a look too… great spot.
Smoke = fire.
c.
Robert French
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 11:49am
Excellent job fisking this one out, Stephen. I found up to opspl405, so it would appear that they are gaming the system in the hundreds. Isn’t it funny that people are so often so dumb.
Oh, wait … wait … can’t we imagine someone - once they’re ferreted out - coming out to say, “Hey, we used that in the interest of transparency. Yeah, that’s it. We wanted people to easily see that we were doing this.”
Looking at the country of origin for several “opspl” accounts, the age and country seem to change with each one. How lazy to not change the name. Oh, yeah. These people are creative and smart, aren’t they.
Anyone want to guess that the agency outsourced this part of the campaign’s strategy (kind term) to someone in say … India or elsewhere … or a 12 year old down the street?
Stephen
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 11:55am
I think this (and recent events) just goes to show you cannot (I repeat, cannot) fake or game anything on the internet.
You’ll get found out every time…
Chris Lake
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 12:31pm
The point is, there’s nothing wrong with uploading a video onto YouTube. There is a credibility issue if you a) deny uploading it and b) are subsequently found out to have created 400 fake accounts to big it up.
This might not be the case of course, but smoke normally equals fire.
We blogged it and have invited the firm to comment, still waiting for a response.
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/362134/pr-firm-in-it-wasn-t-us-what-uploaded-it-youtube-video.html
User generated content and Hotel review sites » Dot Tourism blog - design and digital marketing for travel and tourism
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 3:54pm
[...] The Sunday Times has entered the ongoing debate concerning false reviews found on hotel review websites and follows an article published earlier this year in the New York Times. In recent years, travellers have switched their attention from printed guides compiled by professional inspectors to the numerous user reviews that can be found on a burgeoning number of hotel review sites. It is no surprise that investigations found hotel owners inflating their ratings, with the most blatant giving themselves glowing reviews. The Sunday Times article did not point out that the problem affects all types of rating/review sites - a recent example being speculation that a London PR firm has rigged the YouTube system to get listed on the ‘Most Subscribed to’ page. [...]
Scotty
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 6:58pm
Nice bit of Sherlock Holmesing. You’d think that Borkoswki recent Claire Swires-esque “email spat” howler would have taught them a lesson. Flagrant abuse of YouTube; has anyone named and shamed to PR Week yet?
Jeremy Pepper
Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 6:31am
Why do people think such low numbers are good? Hell, I could put up a video of me picking my nose and get the same number of hits.
Or more.
James Barbour
Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 9:51am
According to my friend Google, OPSPL is (amongst other things) an IT company in Goa.
Did Borkowski offshore their YouTube manipulation?
James Barbour : Online democracy, or astroturfing open season?
Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 10:21am
[...] Online democracy, or astroturfing open season? Kudos to Tony and co for the launch this week of Number 10’s online petitions website. Thanks to some clever coding from the people over at mySociety, you can now petition the PM online. The website’s only been up for two days but is already proving tremendously popular, with petitions requesting the PM to do everything from resign immediately to stand on his head and juggle ice cream. I wonder which they’d like him to do first? Now, on the face of it I think the ePetition website is a great idea. Kind of like a citizen’s EDM website, although setting up an online petition does rather rob the petitioners of the pomp and circumstance of hand-delivering a petition to the black door with the wonky zero.But I’ve a niggling concern. If you believe the various commentaries and observations, our friends over at Borkowski are in trouble (again), this time for apparently manipulating YouTube rankings. Taking this one step further, how easy is it going to be for those pressure groups (or, dare I say it, lobbying firms) with either the time, manpower or resource, to artificially inflate a petition’s popularity?I’m sure mySociety have thought of this, but on the face of it the ePetitions site does look an awful lot like an open invitation to astroturfing. Which can’t be good. Published 16 November 2006 09:56 by James Barbour TrackBack URL for this post:http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/trackback.aspx?PostID=5921 [...]
Phil
Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 12:52pm
Nice work Stephen. The video is just plain embarrassing - I can’t believe how incrowd the whole thing feels.
Stephen
Sunday, November 19, 2006 at 2:47pm
Sorry, should have noticed this on the website earlier: “specialists in digital/web-based scams, stunts”. Makes sense now! Doh.
Last dig I swear…
Ros
Thursday, November 23, 2006 at 12:31pm
Stephen, what exactly are you suggesting?!?
Stephen
Thursday, November 23, 2006 at 12:40pm
Um, er, nothing. Honest.
What’s that you’ve linked to? Vauxhall tribes… would that be a project you’re working on?
Tegan Knight
Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 10:32am
Hold on people! We are talking about a PR agency here aren’t we!? Not just any PR agency at that. This is a great idea regardless of whether or not they posted it on YouTube themselves. It’s stylishly produced and gets the intended message to its audience in an innovative way. If that’s not great PR I don’t know what is! Well done Borkowski!
I suspect this was used to send out to all of their exiitng clients individually and that it was posted on YouTube as an after thought. Big deal! Get over yourselves. I think you may all be a little jealous that you didn’t come up with the idea.
P.s. Before you start to speculate, NO I do not work for Borkowski! NO I am not one of their clients!
Stephen
Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 11:49am
Hi Tegan,
Think you’ve missed the point a little. Nobody is picking faults with the video. In fact, I think it’s rather good. Nobody’s picking faults because it was posted on YouTube either. There’s nothing wrong with posting your own video on YouTube. In fact that’s its purpose.
The issue here is that the ratings were manipulated so that the video went to the top spot of the ‘most subscribed to’ section.
Scams, stunts or manipulation (of rankings) doesn’t go down too well in the online world.
Btw. No one is speculating who you do or do not work for. A quick Google search tells me that.
Tegan Knight
Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 3:52pm
Stephen,
Thanks for your response. Perhaps I have missed the point re: manipulating ratings. I can understand why this is an ‘issue’ in the online community. I stand corrected!
I have a question for you though. What would Borkowski gain from users of YouTube seeing this video?
Tegan
P.s. Slightly worrying how much of my information is available on the net :o)
Stephen
Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 4:14pm
No worries mate.
I don’t know why to be honest. Could be many different reasons. I.e. To show clients how good they are at doing viral. Or to get coverage for themselves offline - like they did with PR Week.
RE: your info on the net. They say Google isn’t just a search engine anymore - it’s a reputation management system. Quite interesting, particularly for PR/reputation purposes.
Just checked to see if your domain name (www.teganknight.com) is still available and it is. Might be worth registering it for the future.
Cheers,
Online democracy, or astroturfing open season? |
Monday, February 25, 2008 at 7:40pm
[...] But I’ve a niggling concern. If you believe the various commentaries and observations, our friends over at Borkowski are in trouble (again), this time for apparently manipulating YouTube rankings. [...]