Court Says Woman Can Sue Toyota After Being Tricked Into 'Agreeing' To Be 'Stalked' In Ad Campaign Gone Really Wrong

from the eulas-are-not-all-powerful dept

Two years ago, we wrote about how Amber Duick was suing Toyota for their ridiculous ad campaign that allowed people to totally freak out their friends by entering some info about them, and then having that friend be fake "stalked" by someone creepy who would start emailing, texting and calling the person, pretending to be planning to come to their house to stay with them. It was a bad idea all around, done by an ad agency who made the idiotic decision that young men like to "punk" their friends. And, of course, to make it seem "legit," Toyota would trick the victim into "agreeing" by having something totally different sent to them (a personality test) from the friend, which has really broad terms of service.

Toyota sought to dismiss the case, by saying that Duick had agreed to these terms. However, as we predicted when the lawsuit was filed, that agreement isn't standing up in court. The court has rejected Toyota's argument, and is allowing Duick's lawsuit to go forward against Toyota and others associated with the campaign.

The question I'm still trying to answer is what sort of thought process leads anyone to think this kind of campaign is a good idea?

Filed Under: ad campaign, punked, stalking, viral marketing
Companies: toyota

FIFA Threatens To Sue Brewery, Because Dutch World Cup Fans Wore Orange

from the you-can't-do-that dept

FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup, is notoriously aggressive in defending not just its own intellectual property, but those of any sponsors, while going to extreme lengths to crack down on any non-sponsor getting any kind of publicity whatsoever without paying. It's not unlike the Olympics in that manner. Of course, that leads to some absolutely ridiculous situations, like the one many of you are sending in about FIFA ejecting 36 Dutch World Cup team supporters for the massive sin of all wearing the same orange dresses. Why? Because the women all bought the dresses from a Dutch brewery, named Bavaria, so FIFA claims it was a viral marketing stunt by the brewery to capitalize on its IP without paying. In fact, FIFA is now threatening to sue. I'd love to see that lawsuit, because it's difficult to think of any sane reason why this should break any law. As someone from the brewery noted:

"Fifa does not have the monopoly on orange and people have the freedom to wear what they want."

What if a bunch of fans all just decided to wear the same things to show support for their team?

Of course, the really amusing part of all of this is that, without ejecting those women, I would bet most people would have had no idea at all that the orange dresses represented this brewery. Now, however, it's all over the press. Nice work FIFA. You just helped promote the brewery.

Filed Under: ambush marketing, dresses, fifa, orange, viral marketing, world cup
Companies: bavaria, fifa

Can The FTC Enforce Honesty As The Best Policy?

from the Truth-Be-Sold dept

The FTC's advertising-practices division is considering an update to ad guidelines that would hold bloggers liable for false or misleading statements, if they are compensated to promote or review a product. The FTC will vote on changes to its guidelines this summer, and the agency says it will review public comments beforehand. But is additional regulation really necessary?

While some ad agencies are worried about the "chilling effect" new regulations might have on nascent viral campaigns, other groups point out that transparency should be at the core of any social media campaign in the first place. And this is concept that should be recognized before any word-of-mouth ad campaign is even started: transparency and authenticity are the keys to a brand's marketing reputation. If a company thinks it can fool consumers with astroturf campaigns, it should really think twice about the potential damage such dishonesty can do. In fact, ultimately, running honest marketing efforts will be much more effective for winning over consumers. So although the threat of new regulations might force some companies to reconsider their sneaky viral ads plans, the more realistic penalty for disingenuous ads is the loss of trust from valued customers.

Assuming, though, that additional gov't regulations are actually instituted -- holding bloggers liable will not necessarily solve the "problem" of paid blog reviews. Presumably, the objection to paid reviews is that such content misleads consumers and that companies behind the fabricated opinions are free to create as much false info as they want. However, if the liability for this unsavory behavior is laid at the feet of bloggers, then the blame is shifted from the company (that is more justly at fault) to a possible multitude of bloggers. An evil corporation bent on promoting misinformation would love to spread the liability around, since the legal burden would be on individual bloggers. The unintended consequence might be that even more dishonest ad campaigns are encouraged since the liability does not lie with the corporations backing them.

So before the FTC begins regulating blog posts, some thought to the ramifications will hopefully be brought up. The goal of protecting consumers may be a noble one, but the side effects of bad regulations could potentially make things worse.

Filed Under: bloggers, ftc, viral marketing

Brands Still Struggling To Find That Viral Magic Sauce

from the you-mean-it's-not-that-easy? dept

Viral marketing continues to vex plenty of big brands who don't seem to understand that merely having a "viral" campaign (or just saying your campaign is viral) won't make it successful. The WSJ has a nice post on one recent viral miss from Trident gum for a new product that is supposed to strengthen and rebuild teeth. The campaign involved fake web videos being exposed as fake on a fake TV show -- a concept which sounds much more confusing than compelling. But perhaps the problem is that the company and its marketers went into the exercise set on creating a viral campaign, and treated it as such, even trying to seed it by sending emails to dental hygienists and posting in online dental forums. Compare that to the comments from the creator of some of Burger King's successful viral campaigns, like the Subservient Chicken: "People go into brainstorming viral, and you can’t go into it with that intention. What you can go into it with, though, is the idea of making a great ad. If you do make a great ad, people will talk about it. The viral part will sort of be a consequence." Marketers have to understand that, perhaps even more so than in other types of ads, the content of viral campaigns has to be able to stand on its own as content. The focus has to be on making great content; if the content sucks, all the viral intentions in the world won't help.

Filed Under: viral marketing
Companies: trident

Man Sues Former Employer For Not Updating Whois... And Then Acting Stupid

from the blame-game dept

Eric Goldman has the details on a fascinating case involving a guy suing his former employer for failing to update the whois info on their domain names (which used his names as the contact) and then pulling a bogus astroturfing marketing stunt that people started blaming him for organizing. Greg Meyerkord worked for Zipatoni, a "promotional marketing company." While there, he was the contact name on their domain registrations. He stopped working for Zipatoni in 2003. However, in 2006 Zipatoni was the company behind the disastrously stupid "fake" viral marketing campaign known as All I Want For Xmas is a PSP. After that was exposed, blogs went to town making fun of Sony... and Zipatoni. As part of that, people went to the whois and "outed" Meyerkord, including calling him a "douchebag."

Because of this, Meyerkord is suing Zipatoni, claiming a privacy violation. A lower court rejected this argument, but an appeals court has sent it back, saying there could be an issue if Zipatoni acted with "malice." That's probably going to be difficult, so the case may not be going anywhere. Goldman notes that it's pretty ridiculous that Zipatoni left the incorrect whois on the domain for so long, but it's not that surprising to me. With many registrars, it's pretty much a "set it and forget it" type of operation, where there's little need to ever review or change the info.

Filed Under: privacy, viral marketing, whois
Companies: zipatoni

UK Band Admits It's 'Utterly Dependent' On Piracy

from the except-they-call-it-viral-promotion dept

At some point, it won't make sense to post these sorts of examples any more because it will just be common sense that bands can and do benefit from so-called "piracy," but every time we post one of these stories, we get people complaining that this couldn't possibly work for others. When a band is big, then it will never work for small artists. When they're small, it'll never work for big artists. Once we even had a commenter complain that it might work for big artists or small artists -- but it was the all important artists in the middle that it would never work for.

So, here we go again, with yet another example of a band that isn't worried about piracy. It's an award-winning acoustic folk duo out of the UK, called Show of Hands, where one of the members admits that one of the most popular ways that people find out about the band is when others share the band's music, and this often drives them to come out to shows and buy CDs as well. The band points out that "piracy" is a bad description of what happens:

You may call this process 'piracy' if you wish - for me it is an act of generosity and it both increases our audience size and record sales. And as I always say on the night - if you're going to do it anyway you may as well feel good about it! I believe the official term is 'viral marketing', and we depend utterly upon it.

Yet, if he listened to the RIAA or the IFPI, apparently, all this viral marketing that the band depends on would be "no different than common theft."

Filed Under: piracy, viral marketing