gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

this week's "beyond lame" award goes to...

Fake blogs are pretty lame. But fake commenters? Wow.

The brilliant Tom Coates (one of my favorite reads these days) tells the whole sad, "beyond lame" story. And he makes a very salient point:

I'm going to give them the benfit of the doubt and say that this whole enterprise is based on clumsiness and stupidity rather than evil, but we have to make a stand and make it clear to these people that if you live by the sword you die by the sword. It's not good enough for just these marketing people to realise that they've screwed up and damaged the brands they were associated with, we have to keep making examples of them to stop other clumsy organisations viewing our self-created territories as nothing more than sales opportunities. Do not lie to us because we will expose you. Be honourable, or we will erase you. And all anyone will see when they search on Google for your products is that there is no depth to which you will not stoop to get another few bottles into someone's shopping basket.

[UPDATE:] So they write an apology to Tom:

We are writing to you in response to the Barry Scott posting on 30th September 2005. We’re all aware that Barry Scott, the advertising character is a marketing creation and we have been responsible for raising his awareness. The posting on 30th September was unplanned and an error of judgement and we unequivocally apologise for this. We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.

Lee Bryant makes the point in Tom's comments: "I would hate to be the minimum wage young PR wannabee who has to carry the can for this." Amen.

Moral of the story is, if you're going to pimp in the blogosphere, be open about it.

[Cough] Anybody want to buy a bottle of wine? How about a $4000 suit?

Posted by hugh macleod at October 3, 2005 10:06 PM | TrackBack