Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: Viral marketing.
« on: 2005-08-17 14:18:42 » |
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[Blunderov] I've been bitching about having my personal bandwidth hijacked by sly advertising lately. What they do is they set you up with the full version for a few weeks and then continue with a campaign using a much shorter (and less costly) sawn-off version of the piece. The idea is that the hapless viewer fills in the blanks in the script on behalf of the advertiser at his own psychic expense. I feel as if I've had my pocket picked.
Sorely assailed as I am, I was further stricken to learn that yet more doom is gathering in the form of 'viral marketing'. Worse yet, this should have been easy to predict but it totally snuck up on me. Rats.
'BBC punks Wikipedia in game marketing ploy?' http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bbc_punks_wikipedia_.html <snip> Someone has apparently abused collaborative reference site Wikipedia in a viral marketing campaign for a BBC online alternate reality game, or ARG. Boing Boing readers ask whether the BBC (or someone acting on their behalf, like a promotional agency) is responsible...
...Reader Comment: Anonymous says,
I can't say who I am, but I do work at a company that uses Wikipedia as a key part of online marketing strategies. That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or "leaks" embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it (evil laugh).
On the other side, I love it from an academia/sociological standpoint, and I don't necessarily have a problem with it used as a viral marketing tool. After all, marketing is a form of information, with just a different end point in mind (consuming rather than learning).
I imagine quite a few Wikipedia users would beg to differ. </snip>
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