Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463
In a marketing campaign idea that even the least savvy internet user could have told you was a terrible idea, the North Face decided to announce publicly earlier this week how it gamed Google Search results to promote its products by uploading photos of them to high-traffic Wikipedia entries.
North Face even gloated about its success with a short, two-minute video detailing how shots of famous locales were swapped for similar-seeming photos featuring North Face product placement, inorganically juicing North Face visibility in Google results. The opening of the video showed a graphic of a Google Search bar filling up in real time with the words, “How can a brand be the first on google without paying anything for it?”
Now, the brand is apologizing for the move, and for having claimed it worked with Wikipedia-owner the Wikimedia Foundation. And, in an interview with The New York Times, North Face is also claiming that it was the cause of a lack of communication between the company and an independent distributor outside the US.
[...]The Wikimedia Foundation didn’t mince words in its own blog post. “We were disappointed to learn that The North Face, an outdoor recreation product company, and Leo Burnett Tailor Made, an ad agency retained by The North Face, unethically manipulated Wikipedia,” the organization wrote in a blog post published yesterday. “They have risked your trust in our mission for a short-lived marketing stunt.” The organization said it only became aware of the tactic once details of the ad campaign were divulged in an Ad Age report on Tuesday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 09 2019, @08:06AM (1 child)
Then we might believe you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Sunday June 09 2019, @08:38AM
Patagonia should donate $1M to Wikipedia for the free publicity and goodwill. People love when brands throw shade.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Mer on Sunday June 09 2019, @08:22AM
It's actually a really clever hack from the viewpoint of the company. I wish I could be admirative of it since in the end it's got less of an impact on me than other advertising innovations such as malicious tracking pixels.
How dumb is it to gloat about it though? I bet the guys that asked for the video weren't the ones that thought about the trick.
“How can a brand be the first on google without paying anything for it?” is giving the stick to get beaten. Even if wikipedia doesn't get mad at this, google will. Why would google ever let a freebie loophole live.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday June 09 2019, @10:13AM (5 children)
Services like Youtube could ditch commercials and sign-in with Hollywood on featuring full length films and series for free with deepfaked product placements: One month the guy in the film will drink a Coke. The other month, a Pepsi. People will wear different clothing and accessories from different brands... The soundtrack could feature different songs tailored to the audience preference so they'd be able to use symphonic, metal or electronic to match people's different tastes... The people who don't want the product placement would pay premium for the DVDs or the likes...
Profit?
compiling...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 09 2019, @11:44AM (2 children)
How much are product placements even worth? If the public is becoming more resistant to advertising, the bubble could burst.
Reese's Pieces in E.T. was a legendary product placement. Now if you see a can of Coke on screen in a film, was it worth $1,000,000 in business for Coca Cola?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by https on Sunday June 09 2019, @03:56PM (1 child)
No matter your own powerlevel, the public's resistance to advertising is mythical. It requires constant, unrelenting hard work to resist the intended effects of advertising. Worse, putting mental effort into the fight sometimes makes the ads more effective, because sometimes the only goal is to put a brand name into your head, not simply sell you a particular product. Telling yourself "Nike shoes are shit" when you see their ads isn't effective unless you do it every time you see their ads, even out of the corner of your eye. You still get the meme "Nike makes shoes" embedded in your brain with a side order of "sneakers are valid footwear".
When it comes time to get some footwear, you end up not thinking about that old cobbler down the road, who's making boots that last a lumberjack ten years and pumps [youtube.com] that last a lifetime.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 09 2019, @06:33PM
Supreme apathy is the answer. If you're putting in such effort to fight ads from invading your brain space, you care too much already.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 09 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)
I see you are not a regular JuToob user. There are already plenty of channels who are making very high-quality content with very subtle product placements. For example, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4742876/ [imdb.com] was heavily funded by a multi-national beer company.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 09 2019, @05:08PM
Hey dipshit leave yer racist stupidity in your head, bad enough it is in there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 10 2019, @12:46AM (1 child)
Is anyone surprised by this? If you are, you need to realize there are lots of businesses out there actively trying to game Wikipedia -- no, I'm not talking about businesses who want to change their Wikipedia profile. I'm talking about businesses and freelancers seeking other people/businesses/whatever who want to hire them [theatlantic.com] to try to police and alter Wikipedia for them.
It's all part of the Wikipedia game, which is run by psycho admins and wikilawyers, combating trolls and vandals and corporate and government interests, all the while with a dwindling base of editors because they scare anyone who might threaten them away.
Wikipedia was a great experiment. Unfortunately, it has been hampered by a bunch of policies randomly decided by a contingent of folks in the first 6 months or so of its existence, most of whom no longer are active at the project. And now the remaining folks are stuck continuously cleaning up messes and being so suspicious of any newcomer making a significant change that they drive people away.
Oh well. Wikipedia fans will just keep chanting, "A study a decade ago said we were better than Britannica!" while ignoring Rome burning around them. "The encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is just not a good long-term idea. If you don't believe me, consider the list of long-term hoaxes on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] -- they're only the ones Wikipedia knows about. And I personally know of two other long-standing hoaxes on Wikipedia that aren't even listed there. No, I didn't create them, but I know the people who did.
Consider the crap that happens on most internet forums (including here). Consider the trolls, the people who post crap, the people who are lunatics. Now realize the internet is open to those people to do crap on Wikipedia. Why would you ever trust a single sentence on Wikipedia without fact-checking it? (And no, fact-checking doesn't just mean that there's a linked footnote on Wikipedia -- a huge amount of said sources don't actually contain the information they claim to be using for citation.)
My favorite vandal (back in the day I used to look for such things) on Wikipedia was the one who registered as a user, made some good edits, waited a while, and then went on a spree changing single digits in dates in history articles. Just randomly turned the year 1741 into 1761, etc. These edits stood for weeks before this troll was finally caught after posting some profanity... if they hadn't, a lot of this crap might have stuck in articles for years.
So, companies trying to subtly use Wikipedia to promote products? Really? Say it ain't so!
(Of course it is... though that's the least of our worries. Knowledge is now commodified in a new way, democratized to the strongest wikilawyer or the subtlest troll. And given how many people just rely on Wikipedia in journalism, even to author books, we potentially face one of the biggest crises of knowledge... but no one seems to care, as the Wikimedia Foundation keeps chanting it is the best, and Google keeps the pages at the top of search. Just how far it will need to go until Wikipedia reforms, I don't know....)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 10 2019, @01:22AM
It's those goddamn Jews again. Jews run Wikipedia just like they run Youtube, it's why both of those formerly-trusted services are no longer trustworthy. Pull your shit our of Gmail now before you get cut on account of dare having exercised your constitutional right to free speech.