New home marketing today – a bodyguard of lies

In wartime, Winston Churchill famously said, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

There’s a war on for new home buyers today, and an increasing amount of poison gas is being pumped into blogs and Web sites that feature ratings and reviews of new homes. The perps, acting mostly on behalf of developers, are firms touting “search engine optimization” and “online reputation management” services, and traditional ad agencies venturing into “social networking.”

We’ve seen some of their work on our sites, and point it out when it occurs to blunt any impact it might have. We’re seeing much more of it lately on other Web sites and on blogs operated on behalf of developers.

In some respects this “bodyguard of lies” is a good thing. It alerts home buyers to be very wary of the business ethics of the firms that practice it or hire it out. The way a company initiates a relationship with a buyer may reflect the way it operates throughout the relationship.

Here are a few of the signs you should be alert to:

  • A glowing review from a reviewer writing his first and last review.
  • Several reviews from the same reviewer, all on clients of his firm.
  • Reviews that sound more like what a second-rate copywriter would say than what a home buyer would say.
  • Blog comments that simply reinforce a point made in a blog post.
  • When you Google the screen name of a blog commenter you find the same name appearing in comments on other blogs from the same developer or other clients of the same ad agency. All of the comments sound eerily similar, and all are mindlessly laudatory.

When I first began encountering this behavior I chalked it up to simple unfamiliarity with the Web. On further reflection, I can’t understand how marketing professionals – some of them working on behalf of major developers – can be unfamiliar with basic ethical standards and fail to understand that their behavior can permanently damage their employer and tarnish its brand. It’s only a matter of time until someone calls these companies out by name and creates a record on the Web that can’t be erased.

Added: Don’t miss Dilbert’s take on the subject.

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