Deception is ok if you’re a big corp
July 31st, 2002Adam Curry points to this story about Sony’s practice of using planted actors acting as tourists or bar patrons to hype their product.
Reminds me of the story of Jonathan Lebed, the teenager who precipitated stock gains for himself by hyping them in trading-related message forums under various pseudonyms.
Jonathan’s been subjected to hours of grilling by federal agents, months of stress and legal uncertainty for him and his family, various penalties and sanctions.
Sony just considers it a smart marketing plan.
Um riiiight…
5 Million for a 60 day campaign…. Let’s do the math kids
That’s almost 100,000/day for 60 people… Ummm 1000 per day to walk around and bother people… There have to be better ways to spend $5M…
You can’t force viral marketing, haven’t we learned that yet?