DeBragga Anonymously Takes it to LaFrieda, Bill’s & The Shack
This comment by “challahbackgirl” (cute!) was posted to yesterday’s news about the brand new Frites N Meats Truck (which uses meat from well known butcher DeBragga & Spitler). Notice anything odd about this supposedly unbiased comment from a totally random user?
Here’s a tip to all you businesses out there who think “guerilla marketing” should involve pretending to be a regular commenter on food blogs… if you’re going to insult the competition, you might not want to do it from a company computer. Especially if your company mail server has the company name in the URL. (It’s kind of a dead giveaway.) For those who aren’t technically inclined, here’s a layman’s explanation: I love your meat DeBragga, but you’re busted.
UPDATE: Somebody posted an interesting comment that I’d like to respond to…
From Lunch’er “Beast”:
“Zach, I expected better from you. This isn’t a “shill”, but you’ve spun it that way. Either that or you have very poor reading comprehension skills. She’s only lamenting that everyone in the five boroughs and beyond has been on their knees in front of Pat LaFreida lately. She didn’t “shill” for Debragga (never even mentions them) and she doesn’t even say the frites burgers are good. She only “bets” that they are better than Bill’s. I hardly think this is a shill, despite her place of employment.”
My response is after the jump…
Let me first say, DeBragga is a great meat purveyor, and this shouldn’t reflect negatively on their food, their business, or their management. I have no doubt they are good people and mean well.
But… to your point beast – both Bill’s & the Shake Shack use LaFrieda Beef. And while I don’t necessarily think that they were trying to directly sell people on DeBragga, I do think it is wrong when people log onto websites under fake names and praise a company they work for, while insulting competitors, without letting people know where they work. And companies will continue to do this (in increasingly more clever ways) unless they’re called out for it.
To say “I bet these street burgers are 10 times better than Bill’s Burger Bar” without letting people know that you work for the company that supplies the meat is disingenuous at best, and deceitful at worst. I’m not doubting the authenticity of their comments. They probably love In N Out Burger, and didn’t think much of Bill’s. But if they had simply added “I work at DeBragga so this is opinion is biased…” we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But whoever posted the comment didn’t do that. And they didn’t do that on purpose.
The more transparency there is, the better off we all are. I doubt DeBragga is going to suffer any from my stupid post. But maybe the next company will think twice before they shill on Midtown Lunch.
Posted by Zach Brooks at 2:30 pm, October 29th, 2009 under Shilling.
35 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
35 Comments
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good job zach!
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Challahbackgirl just got SERVED!
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Kinda makes me wonder:
Is your stuff not good enough to stand on it’s own?Anyone think Pat LaFrieda is spending time making up some girly screen names and making fake posts? No.
Just like I don’t buy from Schendy’s halal because they bully competitors, I’m going to be wary of products containing this meat. Sometimes the stuff vendors do gets to the level where I have to determine if I want to spend on them.
Too bad, because I was about to call a bud and schedule a Bill’s visit.
That, and the mixed reviews trickling in have me wondering if Bill’s burger is in fact the emporer with no clothes!!!!
Tech note: When you catch someone doing stuff, it’s good not to tell them how. Now they will know to schill via a anon proxy.
Uber tech note: It’s probably the host name of the web proxy via which they posted, which may or may not be the host name of the mail server.
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Challahbackgirl’s name is ever so clever but I am shamed that one of MY people (Jews, not foodies) was behind this shill. :-(
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Oops. My mistake. Stupid me. I misread it as this being Bills supplier. Sorry, Bill’s.
I probably wasn’t going to try this truck anyway. But I’m still wary of the meat vendor.
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Don’t really give a fuck.
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Rudy,
You really should though.
If you can’t rely on anonymous food blog posts to give valid recommendations, who can you rely on?
Is nothing sacred?
:)
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You would think that in the over 20 years since Al Gore invented the internet, shillers would actually start getting good (or at least not terrible) at their job.
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Truth is, Debragga and Spitler has been around for a long time and has always had a great reputation. The late Mark Sarazin (sp?) was very tight in the food community for many years and the company is highly respected. Ive been involved in the NYC restaurant business since 1982 and D&S has always been known as one of the best.
They don’t need to Shill
(not a shill post)
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Don’t worry about Rudy, he just has an impulsive need to use one or more of the following words in each curmudgeonly comment: f*ck, sh*t, wanker, tosser, bloody, bitch.
Back on topic, I hope (but doubt) that the shill was just an overzealous employee and not the management. If you’re gonna use guerrilla marketing, at least learn some basics of how the interwebs work.
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ceh, …….you missed fuckwit…..shame on you it is your inner voice.
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Zach,
I expected better from you. This isn’t a “shill”, but you’ve spun it that way. Either that or you have very poor reading comprehension skills. She’s only lamenting that everyone in the five boroughs and beyond has been on their knees in front of Pat LaFreida lately. She didn’t “shill” for Debragga (never even mentions them) and she doesn’t even say the frites burgers are good. She only “bets” that they are better than Bill’s. I hardly think this is a shill, despite her place of employment.
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{shelly:~} webster shill
shill Slang. n. One who works as a decoy, as in a confidence game, by
posing as a customer or an innocent bystander. -intr.v.shilled shilling
shills To act as a shill. [Orig. unknown.]Beast. Is there some usage of the word “shill” you’re not familiar with?
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Rereading the message, I have to agree w/ beast…at first I thought DBGB related to Debragga, but it doesn’t. Likewise, I’m not aware that in-n-out uses their stuff. So, at worst this is just a poor attempt to gripe about a competitor…not precisely a shill.
Rudy–that doesn’t even make any sense (not that I expected it to). Also, people who reached 2nd grade learned about conjunctions…fancy stuff really, combining words.
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Just because “callahbackgirl” didn’t register her username the same as the company’s doesn’t mean she was intentionally trying to pass herself off as an innocent bystander, esp. if this is an employee who isn’t authorized to speak on behalf of the company. There’s also no rule that says anyone commenting about a competitor’s products without disclosing their identity is trying to be deceptive.
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“I did not expect one too”
fuckwit
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So other than being a bonhead move…though it wasn’t a super bonehead move since she did not send it from a company email so to say (it was a gmail account that she sent it from…it just happened to also be on a company server) Plus this seems like a gross violation of your TOS…when you sign up as a user of your page it says your email will not be shared with anybody, yet I am sure from the size of the black box she may be very identifiable at work..
This girl clearly a delusional cali transplant (a la her in and out rant) who simply needs to be taken out for better nyc burgers….Somebody should also tell her that if she wants to plug the company she works for she should just post to citysearch instead like every other restaurant in nyc does.
I should give a full disclosure in that the fact that she is a Jewish female hamburger lover I am simply writing in the hopes that perhaps she would go out with me.
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who cares where she works. In-N-Out is the most overrated burger around. I was in cali in-burgering my face off a few short weeks ago. It’s good and it’s cheap. The out-burgering is the same as all the others, though.
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We kind of hate it when you guys say Cali.
Thanks,
-Delusional California Transplant
Filed under “S” for shilling. Thanks Zach.