Viral marketing gone wrong

edanto

The fiasco started when Barry Scott made a comment on Tom Coates' blog empathising with him about father trouble. Tom had written a very personal blog entry about not having had contact with his father for thirty years and Barry's comment said:

"Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn't seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we'd become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry"

Tom Coates was peeved when he followed the link in the comment, only to discover that Barry Scott was a fictional character, existing only to plug Cillit Bang cleaning spray. So, he tried to track down the person that posted the comment and to cut a long story short, it was someone working for a marketing company that made that blog comment above.

What shameless advertising. Talk about leaving a bad taste in someones mouth. And there sure is such a thing as bad publicity. What brand would want to be associated with such crassness? I can't see any merit in that type of campaign. But I don't work in advertising (in fact, I'm with Bill Hicks on the whole industry). What do you guys think of the campaign, though?

It seems like they've learnt their lesson and apologised. Full story on Tom's site . And in the Guardian

whiskeyman

Interesting stuff, but I wouldnt class this as true viral marketing.
It seems more of guerilla marketing tactic for the web.... and a hopeless one at that.
What exactly was their strategy supposed to be?
I've seen it many time before, but the link between product and target just doesnt add up.

edanto

True - it's probably not viral marketing - but I'm not an expert on the terms.

I guess I've assumed that it was part of a ploy to drive traffic to the Barry Scott site by stirring up some controversy - but that might be wrong.

Does anyone know anyone that works for Young & Rubicam, kreativ online, Reckitt Benckiser or perhaps the crisis managers Cohn Wolfe that apologised to him? That apology said that the posting was "unplanned and an error of judgement"; but, well my bullsh1t meter kinda lit up at that one.

randomstranger

Ok, so Ive had a beverage or two and it's silly o'clock, but I couldnt help but feel a little anger at what I read when I clicked on this post, and that very helpful link to Tom's page which gives the full background to this story.

Am I naive when I wonder what the hell the world is coming to??? Im not going to comment in detail, except to say Im chuffed as hell that people on boards.ie and of course people like Tom have undertaken the amazing amount of research it takes to point out these issues to our good selves. I applaud him, and Mr. edanto who brought it to my attention.

All I can say is, if this is where the world of marketing is going - God help us all. Its hard enough to establish a comfortable sense of trust in this world today, without this kind of thing raising its evil head. And one may comment, that the most worrying thing of all is that I'm so shocked by all of this... Im not entirely sheltered! It makes me sick - I hope marketing companies realise that at last there is such a thing as negative publicity - and cillit bang - this is it! Bang - and your reputation is gone!

Me

PS. Did you know that if hold "Ctrl" and scroll the 'scrolly button thing' on your mouse towards you, it makes the text bigger?? Very helpful if one has par-taken in a glass or 6 of the ol' vino... theoretically speaking of course...