Industry Group Sponsors College Course To Create Fake Blog

Scott Jaschik writes "At Hunter College, professors are debating the ethics of a course in which an industry group paid for a class to develop a fake student who would write a fake blog to discourage other students from buying knockoff products. The controversy involves both commercial interference with academic freedom and the ethics of 'guerilla marketing.'"

Fake Blog, Fake Student-

It sounds like those companies really have a handle on how to get the youth on-side.

Re:Fake Blog, Fake Student-

Authenticity and originality are key to the youth demographic and they know it. The problem is that ads have failed at those for a long time. Some ads can still do it through humor and strange premises (like the old spice ads I love so much). Unfortunately, people are smart, and copying another ad campaign's success backfires more often than not.

It's a problem that's crept up on them for the last few years. Frankly, I'm shocked that corporations are struggling to look authentic and original.

Re:Fake Blog, Fake Student-

Authenticity and originality are key to the youth demographic and they know it.

Once they work out how to fake authenticity, they'll crack the youth demographic wide open.

Re:Fake Blog, Fake Student-

Which is pretty funny considering what a bunch of sheep the youth demographic is.

As someone who's old enough to have seen several "youth demographics" come and go, I can tell you that this generation is less sheep-like than the previous 3 or 4.

Re:Fake Blog, Fake Student-

I think you two are defining two different "youth" groups. You're probably thinking of high-schoolers or college kids. Your parent post is probably thinking of people in their early to mid twenties. From a marketing standpoint, the 18-25 age group is more desirable, or so I'm told.

You two probably have different personal experiences with "youth demographics" as well.

Personally, I'm 23. I have a full time job, pay for school on the side, and pay my own mortgage. While I think some commercials are funny (Chuck Norris Old Spice comes to mind), I almost never buy that product. Most of my friends feel the same way.

Re:Fake Blog, Fake Student-

Birdy, birdy, in the sky
Dropped some whitewash in my eye
I'm a big kid, I won't cry
I'm just glad elephants can't fly.

Maybe this was a class about irony

Cooperate sponsored fraud in order to deter legal purchases of questionable knock-off products.

Re:

It's to prepare them for their careers in advertising.

What a screw up.

I love the brag [iacc.org]. The Industry Conclusion is correct, though not the way they want it to be.

Conclusion:
The campaign will live beyond the event as the Web sites will remain live, and students will be reminded by the giveaways to Break the Chain of harmful of harmful events that can result from counterfeiting.

They are going to have a hard time living this one down. Fake blogs, with more than 300 myspace friends, including Justin Timberlake! What they have managed to do is indelibly link their brands to fake. Hyped, expensive fake regardless of real quality. How do they expect anyone to trust them again? Their stuff is better why? Because they spend money on BS like this? Because the "real" stuff comes from a sweat shop with a sharper whip? It's hard to imagine a better example of the harm imaginary property does and they festering pile of lies that supports it.

Well, they now admit it

The blog finally admitted that it was fake: http://encounterheidi.blogspot.com/2007/05/here-is-catch-i-am-totally-not-real.html [blogspot.com] . I love how the students who created this blog chose the ditsy valley girl stereotype to convey their message, and stuck with the persona 'till the bitter end: "Here is the catch- I am totally not real!"...the bolding was me.

Ironic

They are attempting to create a counterfeit person to persuade people to dislike counterfeit goods.

Counterfeiting of goods does suck, but this does not seem to be the way to get people on your side...

Do as I say, not as I do

The industry group in question was the IACC - International anti-Counterfeiting Coallition - their mandate being to fight the production and sale o fraudulent knock off products. They were essentially paying for a class to create a fraudulent student with a fraudulent blog while preventing any sort of critical discussion or analysis in the class.

Ho hum. Just another case of corporate hypocrisy, move along, move along....

OUTRAGE!

As a Hunter student I am outraged that I was not monetarily compensated with part of this graft.

Educational Standards?

You can add patronizing to that list.

If students are so dumb that they need to be told basic smarts by a blog (fake or otherwise) then they should not be in University.

Re:Educational Standards?

to what basic smarts are we referring? Distinguishing counterfeit products from the real thing? Can you do that unerringly? Can you tell me the difference between a knockoff of windows XP and the real thing? Can you tell me the difference between a knockoff brake cleaner and a brand name brake cleaner? Maybe, but I would hardly classify that as "basic smarts" or a prerequisite to entering college.

Perhaps you are referring to a willingness to choose the "real" product over the knockoff. Here you are on unstable ground. In some cases (heart surgery, car parts, etc), the quality of the product is not immediately visible to the buyer and can't be divined by inspection. In that case, there is a strong argument to be made that avoiding knockoff products is good sense. You can't eyeball a hydraulic line to see if it will fail catastrophically. In the case of DVD's, CD's and purses, the need is less severe. There isn't a buyer safety issue. if your knockoff version of Rush Hour XXVII sucks, then it isn't the end of the world. the people who suffer are the industry (because they can't sell you a copy of something you already have) so it is THEIR interest that is being protected here, not yours.

Which part of this is common sense?

They should be debating the ethics of high book...

They should be debating the ethics of high book costs and the small changes that force you to buy a new book each year for no new info as well other carp fees that are pushing College costs up not stuff like this.

Stop the lies!

The blog was not sponsored! I met this poor Heidi girl and she was really heartbroken about that counterfeit handbag, so we swapped our sob stories. I got real cool Dell as a birthday present, but then it turned out it had a counterfeit copy of Vista installed. Not only the wallpaper had a slightly different color, but the fonts on the screen were not as crisp and defined as on REAL Vista. Worst of all, I couldn't enjoy any of the Windows Genuine Advantage downloads.

Then I started reading up on that and discovered that software counterfeiting is invariably linked to crime and even terrorism. Wouldn't somebody think of the children! Be a broken link in the chain and stop software piracy! Most importantly, don't undermine american capitalism by using free software that is anyway full of stolen code and patent infringements!

Read the full article

The "fake blog" portion of the story is compelling, but it isn't the whole story. all in all, the actions of the university and the coalition (the IACC) were pretty repugnant. The school engineered the course to teach the industry viewpoint and ensured (via industry observers) that the professor did not deviate from the talking points. when the story initially broke, the school decided that it was an internal matter and didn't merit any outside scrutiny.

The professor in question voiced real ethical problems with the course but was basically told to shut up and teach--because he didn't have tenure that was pretty much his only option. The job market for PhD's without tenure isn't exactly robust.

Never mind that this was basically taxpayer subsidized indoctrination.

Re:Read the full article

where do you people come from? why do you even bother formating this post to quote me and link this? I mean, why don't you just yell at your houseplant or something? Let me know when you have a modicum of understanding of the following words:

ethics
severity
continuum
contradiction
proportionality

Don't strain yourself.

Double Dipping & Possible Sunshine Law Violati

I would love to know if the students also had to pay for the class, just like they do for any other class. Also did the students get a full outline of the class before they signed up for it, like most other classes offer?

Sounds to me like this is a case of double dipping. The school gets the corporation to pay for the class, and then they turn around and get the students to pay for the class as well. I'm sure every University and College would love to be paid double for each class they teach. Sounds like this is more about the greed of the school, than it is about actual teaching.

Also where is the state on this? I don't know about their state but the state of Missouri has Sunshine laws. Basically if you take state or government money, then everything has to be open and clearly detailed about what you do with the money and everything associated with it. You can't have secret board meetings, or secretly spend the money on anything. Everything in the school has to be open and transparent, even school groups that receive money from the school, since they get it from the government.

Sounds like a *HUGE* violation of the "Sunshine laws" to say that this whole review, etc. is an internal school matter. It certainly would not be the case in Missouri.

Re:

You must be new here

Re:

I think it probably fills up because there is a big requirement at most colleges in order to ensure that students have a strong "liberal arts" background. What really happens is that classes like this get filled up as students look around for easy classe

Re:

Why not? I mean, there are interesting courses to take but for most students at large universities the course description doesn't really provide a very good guide as to the nature of the course and the expectations. I'm not interested in filler courses c

you mean something like...

slashdot?

Re:

are you serious? Do you really think the fundamental problem cited in the article is the existence of the blog? While I conceed the point that students in more hard science fields see corporate sponsorship more regularly, the issue here was that the IACC