
The latest Digiday confessions
series installment presented an actual confession, as a social
media supervisor admitted to being pressured by their boss to create burner accounts to respond to negative press and criticism aimed at a
client’s product.
While celebrities,
entertainment CEOs,
and stalkers
utilize burner accounts for a variety of sneaky motivations, how can the maneuver
possibly be okay in the service of brands?
Advertisements and
sponsored content must clearly be indicated as such; plus, regulated messages
like pharmaceutical marketing are required to carry disclaimers regarding
results and patient depictions. Even basic campaigns undergo scrutiny by legal
departments—as well as entities such as the FDA and FCC.
Knowingly fabricating
defensive statements in an anonymous and underhanded style constitutes
deliberately deceptive communications, no?
If burner accounts are a
common practice for brand management, why did the revelation happen in
Digiday’s confessional?
Honestly, Adland and its
practitioners regularly rank high on lists for least
trusted professions. Is it really necessary to maintain dominance in
distrust?
Perhaps social media firms
will create executive titles like Burner Account Director.
‘I felt like
I had committed a crime’: Confessions of a social media lead on negative press
and burner accounts
By
Julian Cannon
Social
media management requires navigating the constantly vigilant eyes of the
digital world. The task often involves monitoring brand mentions, comments and
discussions across various social media platforms, as well as handling crises
if bad press surfaces. Due to social media’s fast and widespread impact, social
media managers are crucial to determining a brand’s response to adverse
situations, protecting its reputation and maintaining transparent communication
with its audience.
However,
rather than crafting authentic statements to address its audience, some
organizations take an alternative approach to deal with critics, with some
going as far as creating fake or “burner” accounts to respond to criticism.
In
this latest installment of Digiday’s Confessions series, in which we exchange
anonymity for candor, a social
media supervisor details what using burner accounts for a brand is like and why
he wouldn’t do it again.
This
interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Responding to critics through burner accounts made
headlines this week. As a social media lead for an entertainment company, have
you ever dealt with a request like that? If so, what was that like?
Yes
I did. And I hope it is the last time I ever get that request. It was for a
recent video game that came out not too long ago. I first thought it was odd
because my CEO does not usually give into the social media storm. But because
this game was highly anticipated and got negative reviews, they asked me how
good I was at cleaning up a mess. I thought at the time it was a joke but he
was serious.
After getting the request, what happened next?
I
was flying back from TwitchCon when I was alerted that I needed to do this. I
kept getting Slack messages while I was on the airplane to go on the Microsoft
Teams video call and my CEO told me that I needed to fire back at the critics.
I thought it was not worth it. But the company went through a round of layoffs
[this year] and [I thought] if I don’t do this, I would be let go.
How did you create the burner accounts? Were the accounts
already in existence, and were there any guidelines you followed as you created
the accounts and started posting?
The
accounts did not exist prior. I had to use the time for the rest of my flight
to come up with names and bios that could not trace back to names of real life
people. I was told to create three burner accounts for each platform like Reddit,
X, Instagram and also a few gaming forums. For accounts with pictures, I used
icons from scrapped freelance projects. After I created the template profiles
of each account, I shared them with the CEO for approval and within a few
minutes, the CEO said it was good to go. Once I landed and went home, the chaos
began.
What
happened?
Managing
the accounts is like managing a fast food restaurant with difficult employees.
No matter what you do, you have to act quick. I asked the CEO if I can go to
the office to take a few desktop screens home so I would not have to lose my
anxiety or focus on looking at everything on one screen. For X, I had to make
sure that none of those three accounts were responding to each other. I had one
account responding to tweets on big-name outlets that panned the game, one
account responding to streamers and the final one doing this to general fans.
The
CEO also paid for verification checkmarks on all of the X accounts to increase
visibility of them. I will say that it was much easier to manage X until they
removed TweetDeck so I had to use multiple tabs. As for Reddit and Instagram,
the process was similar, but I had to wait for at least a day or two to engage
on the platforms or else the accounts would be flagged for spamming. I also had
to purchase a VPN before attempting to engage, so that no trace of my activity
would be traced back to me.
Every
response I had to do for every account on each platform needed to be different
and the CEO told me that [nothing] is off limits as long as I do not use any
slurs, racist language or excessive swearing. I had to come up with responses
in real time with no approval processes. I also could not create or generate
any social posts with artificial intelligence. Everything had to be organic
just to respond to people without coming off as the accounts promoted the game.
Of all the platforms, I found Reddit to be [the most] challenging since I got
messages from users asking me why I liked the game. Instagram was the easiest
because comments on any post cannot be filtered.
Why do you think the company wanted to respond to critics
with burner accounts?
I
think because of the layoffs and the state of transparency in the gaming
industry as a whole, the company did not want to hire a crisis communications
person [to manage the negative press] after they just fired one not too long
ago. I believe that it was a cost effective move to put someone like me in a
position that I was not qualified to handle. It is one thing where you have to
make a social media statement and move on like other companies would do. But
this, to me, did nothing but put more stress on me. I initially thought that I
would do this for one day and move on. Nope, the CEO wanted me to do this until
the heat died down at a time when all he cared about was filling a quota of
gaming sales. It was a massive distraction because I was also making graphics
and social copies that are scheduled for this month to get approved at the same
time.
Did you have any reservations about creating burner
accounts to respond to criticism? Did you worry people might figure out what
was going on?
Immediately
after being asked to do this, I felt like I had committed a crime. I figured
that there would be some overtime for it, but I did not expect to go past 10
p.m. at night to keep up with the pace. If I was caught, I would have wondered
what it would do to my career if I would want to work for a bigger company. I
was worried if I would be caught by someone I am connected with. And I was
worried if I would get blacklisted from the industry. I think social media
managers should not accept requests like this because you will be pressured to
act on behalf of the company, to accept all the negative attention.
Is there anything that you wish your managers or
supervisors understood about this practice?
I
wish they understood that social media leads, managers and anyone else in that
role are constantly working under pressure to deliver and maintain a company’s
image. The whole time I was doing this for them, I could not help but feel that
if this company were to get caught, the backlash would exceed the actual game.
Would you do it again?
It’s
not something I’ll do again. And to add to your last question, I also wish they
understood that not every video game is going to be a smash hit. Although the
public perception is going to criticize it anyway it can, the CEO’s decision to
do this should not have been made or conceptualized. All of this time and
energy should have been towards how we could have fixed this [game] over
fighting with random strangers, public figures and outlets online.