Updated: Sony owns up:
From MediaPost: Sony Wednesday released a statement acknowledging that the blog was phony. “Sony Computer Entertainment America developed alliwantforxmasisapsp.com as a humorous site targeting those interested in getting a PSP system this holiday season,” it read. “We’ve now added a posting that provides this clarification to consumers visiting the site.” The company did not comment further.
Also on Wednesday, the authors admitted they created the blog as a marketing tool. “As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony,” the author wrote. “Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.”
Original post:
Consumer electronics giant Sony appears to have been caught out creating a fake blog based around persuading your parents and loved ones to buy you a PSP for Christmas. According to Ad Freak, the URL of the blog is registered to marketing agency Zipatoni. Playstation is listed as a client on the Zipatoni site.
What makes this one especially laughable is that it’s written in a hip-hop stylee, encouraging visitors to ‘kick your own flow’, etc. The 906 comments on the latest blog entry suggest readers think the idea of major corporations attempting to fake word of mouth popularity through the abuse of social media is uhm.. wack. Please, clever marketing people with your streetwise ideas, don’t do it. You will get found out and then people will think you are idiots. Provides a good laugh for the rest of us, though…
Sony CEO Howard Stringer has responded to press criticisms with the counter-challenge, “Is it because I is black?”*
*not really
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December 13th, 2006 → 1:41 pm @ Ian Delaney
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