Reel Pop

Over the holiday, Techcrunch published a post by a Stanford student who claims to run clandestine marketing campaigns for a variety of entertainment and consumer brands (Hollywood studios, record labels, etc.) meant to ensure those companies' promotional videos go viral.

Through a combination of savvy production methods (e.g., keep the videos short, create a good thumbnail) and surreptitious view count jiggering (e.g., cross-comment on message boards, blogs, and Facebook/MySpace/Digg with fake accounts) Dan Ackerman Greenberg claimed to have achieved 20 million views for clients over 3 months, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to 1.5+ million views each.

Lo, the outcry from the guardians of the meritocracy. To judge from the 400+ mostly-outraged comments on the post, plus the slew of response posts on technology blogs, you'd think Ackerman had revealed the concept of Payola for the first time. "So basically it’s all about using various forms of spam? Classy," read an early comment on Techcrunch.  Another:  "If fake videos and fake comments, why not fake views, fake click-throughs, and fake campaign success? I’m sure it pays just as well."

Others, like the dependably-rational Matthew Ingram, argued that it's hard to believe "that everyone is so shocked at this company’s 'astro-turfing' and 'sock puppet' approach." Agreed: For anyone who isn't intentionally blinkered, there's a surfeit of recent examples: Wal-Mart/Edelman's fake blogs, Digg's vulnerability to gaming, Whole Food's CEO's fake online identity.

So that part of the conversation is tired before it's even begun. Have money, will market.

But here's an angle you probably haven't considered: as odoriferous as Greenberg's biz practices may seem, you may actually want Hollywood to use marketers like him, if only because he's helping Hollywood (and advertisers) make a buck online. The more bucks made online, the more rapid and successful their forays into the online marketplace. The more successful they are -- and the more successful marketing companies like Greenberg's -- the harder it is for studios to claim they can't afford to pay content residuals. And who does that help? The writers.

See? Greenberg's actually helping the little guy.