04.25.11
Grand winner of GE Lickspittling contest announced
The grand prize winner of General Electric’s Good Time line dance exercise in corporate lickspittling was announced by the company, to little fanfare, Friday.
It’s here.
Even during its own pr stunt, General Electric couldn’t resist putting fingers on the contest scales, just like it puts its fingers on the scales of its corporate income tax bill in the US.
The majority of the winner’s views, according to the video’s own statistical breakdown, came from embedding on property run by GE’s pr effort Without the cheating, the entry would have been less popular, in line with much of its competition.
Which is to say, despite the big pr effort and presence on YouTube, these things were not popular at all.
Had DD’s “GE & Jeff (Taxavoidination)” been in the contest, by numerical count, I would have won.
As part of the astro-turfing campaign, GE paid for fluffer videos from some of the most subscribed to young entertainers on YouTube, pop artists like David Choi and the group, Boyce Avenue.
The promotional videos were viewed hundreds of thousands of times. None of it rubbed off. In fact, they look brainless and phoned in for the cash, like this example by Choi.
“This contest is here to promote clean-ness in the world,” says Choi in the video. “That’s a great cause. Who doesn’t like clean stuff?”
He meant clean water. However, apparently, to GE’s dismay, Choi really wasn’t paying attention after he got the check.
Choi apparently has about 800,000 subscribers on YouTube, an astonishing number and an obvious reason why GE solicited him.
It didn’t help. GE’s Ecomagination winner was viewed over 1300 times, nowhere near the return one might expect after pushing by various YouTube celebrities.
Achievement of corporate joy through celebrity and employee pimped astro-turfing — major fail.
As for the “clean stuff,” the company could just have given the bottled water away to the impoverished and skipped the volunteer employee advertising.
Did Jesus ask the crowd for a line dance and some props before he healed the lepers?