Gaming Sites Accuse Nvidia Of Shilling

By: David A. Utter
2006-02-06

Online gaming forums may have been hosts to shills paid by a guerilla marketing company to establish themselves in those forums and then post a marketing message delivered by Nvidia.

Gawker Media's shopping complaint site Consumerist reported on what could be some questionable ethics in play should accusations of shilling by a marketing firm on behalf of vaunted graphics hardware maker Nvidia prove true.

Consumerist followed up on complaints posted on a couple of online forums, Beyond 3d and Elite Bastards, and contacted Nvidia about them. The complaints allege that Nvidia's marketing partner, Arbuthnot Entertainment Group, hired "employees to create ‘personas' in various gaming communities, slowly building up the trust of other members by frequent posting unrelated to Nvidia, to later cash in that trust with message board postings talking up the positive qualities of Nvidia's products."

An exchange between Consumerist and Nvidia eventually ended at a blank wall. Consumerist asked Nvidia if it or AEG were seeding fan sites with marketing people to develop a long-term reputation before posting entries favorable to Nvidia without disclosing their professional connections:

[Consumerist asked] "Has Nvidia hired any companies, including AEG, to do this sort of undisclosed ‘viral' marketing?"

"May be best to talk on the phone," was [Nvidia's Public Relations Director Derek] Perez's reply.

That was February 1st. We have yet to receive a phone call from Mr. Perez, despite trying to schedule one multiple times. We informed Mr. Perez on the 3rd that we would be running our stories with or without his comments. We feel at this point that the issue is being avoided by Nvidia.

Consumerist noted one of the testimonials on AEG's site included one from Perez, reproduced here:

"AEG serves a pivotal role in helping us to build and manage online buzz for NVIDIA products. AEG's online community outreach programs have been extraordinarily successful in improving public perception of our company and its products. So much so that we've recently expanded AEG's role into some of our other product lines. AEG plays an essential role in our marketing and public relations programs. In our opinion, they're the best-of-breed experts in the field of online PR and community management."
Nvidia isn't the only company to glowingly comment on AEG. Other companies represented on the testimonials page include Microsoft Games Studios, AOL, and the UnderGround Online entertainment site.

Later, Consumerist noted the existence of a post at the Penny Arcade webcomic site purporting to be an email from someone who was offered a job at an unnamed guerilla marketing company in San Francisco. It offered another look at the formalized process for shill marketing as he experienced it:

I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.

But the most critical point was this: develop and integrate the identity. No random "HEY EB GAMES IS AWESOME BUY THIS" stuff.

Didn't take the job.

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About the Author: David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Gaming Sites Accuse Nvidia Of Shilling