Paying People To Rename Themselves As Brands

from the would-you-do-it? dept

Wed, Oct 25th 2006 8:49am — Joseph Weisenthal

The power of word-of-mouth to make or break a product has long been well known. But recently, there's been interest in directly exploiting this, as though people's conversations were just another advertising channel, like TV or radio. The problem is, it's really difficult to get people to just bring up products in their conversations, and trying to do so raises all kinds of ethical problems, not mention it's really hard to measure and track. Along these lines, one company is offering to pay people to add an advertisement to their IM names, so, for example, if your handle had been "chessplayer103", you'd change it to "chessplayer 103 visit ____.com", and every time your name popped up in conversation, the ad would appear yet again. And the longer you talk with more and more friends, the more you get paid. This is certainly one way of injecting a product into a conversation, and it's easy to imagine the next step, which would be to pay people for actually dropping an ad into the text of the chat. But ultimately, we doubt many people will be keen on monetizing their friendships this way, and it should be pretty easy to scam using computer-to-computer automated chats.

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14 Comments

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Don, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:03am

Rename themselves
Is it me, or has marketing run amok?
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Niquesy, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:09am

Brand X
Next people will be naming thier kids after brands to pay for college.
Stranger to new mom, "He's so cute, what's his name?"
Mom to Stranger, "Sketcher John"
Stranger to mom, "Did you get enough to pay for college?"
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madmikeVisitTechDirt.com, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:23am

Really?!
Sounds good to me. How much does it pay?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:35am

Re: Really?!
> Sounds good to me. How much does it pay?

Not enough to recover your dignity
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Keybored, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:38am

Advertising has definately run fu*** amuck. Please make it stop.
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WOOHOO!!!!, 25 Oct 2006 @ 10:56am

Money for chatting!!!!
where do is sign up??? If all i have to do is change my screen name, why not. Its no different then when someone buys a "GAP" t-shirt and is a walking ad. You just get paid for this advertising.
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anyone @ techdirt dot com, 25 Oct 2006 @ 11:08am

HELLO!!!!
dude, whats in a name?

Whats in an email address?

email addresses have LONG been advertising for sites.
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Mel, 25 Oct 2006 @ 11:16am

Re: Brand X
you should read "Jennifer Government" by Max Barry. Everyone in the book has the last name of the company they work for, including government agents. There is a social stigma if you don't introduce yourself as "Melanie Enron", etc. as it means you are jobless.
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DV Henkel-Wallace, 25 Oct 2006 @ 11:29am

it's happening already
and it's easy to imagine the next step, which would be to pay people for actually dropping an ad into the text of the chat.
This has been happening for the last few years, actually. There are specific agencies that contract with individuals (primarily students or others in their 20s) to talk up specific products.
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madmikeVisitTechDirt.com, 25 Oct 2006 @ 11:42am

Re: Re: Really?!
Everyone would whore out their username if they got paid the right amount of money.

I would do it for two dollars.
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eric (visit, 25 Oct 2006 @ 11:44am

i foresee
you know when you watch football, and they show a yellow line for the first down line, and now they have another thing superimposed that says "3rd and 7". I predict ads there soon. already happens in baseball, there's a greenscreen just to the left of the batter
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Mike C., 25 Oct 2006 @ 12:01pm

Marketing is out of control...
{sarcasm} I, for one, (visit travelwebsite.com) would never stoop so low ($10 off your next visit to Joe Chiropractor - mention this ad) as to include advertisements (subliminaladvertising.com) in my text-based communications (cellphonecompany.com) with any of my friends (socialnetworkingsite.com)..... {/sarcasm}
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Sanguine Dream, 25 Oct 2006 @ 12:02pm

Oh no...
I can't blame them for trying something new but with spamming as bad as it is these days I'm not sure this will take off. It must be cheaper for companies to invest more into marketing departments than R&D departments...
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|3331373|3|_||3, 25 Oct 2006 @ 7:48pm

Change the names of your frinds when they appear
I know people who do this because they cannot keep track of the stupid names that some of the girls I know seem to have nothing better to do than come up with. This way, you set up some chat script with a bunch of friends, scam the companies, and do so a t no cost or real effort on my part. I'm up for it, if the money's good enough.
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