Seth Godin wrote this about marketing hoaxes. Somewhat similar to this story and somewhat different:

“It’s easier than ever to mount ornate hoaxes and fancy subterfuges. And you can get away with it for a while. But often, and at the worst possible moment, the market might change its mind. It might stop enjoying the fakery and switch to scorn and anger instead. I have no clue how to predict when this will happen. How much risk are you willing to take?”

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/authenticity-an.html

Posted by Hanan Cohen on 20 November 2008 @ 8pm

Somebody (Dave Winer?) said that ideally advertising is indistinguishable from real content because it effectively *is real content. I think that’s true to some extent, but feels dirty when it comes from the other direction—real content that pretends it isn’t advertising. I suppose it’s a somewhat arbitrary distinction, or at least marketers are trying to make it such.

Since marketing is usually necessary for a company’s survival, I’m generally willing to tolerate it—provided they respect me. Being honest enough to acknowledge that something *is marketing is an essential part of this tolerance.

I watched the video with the assumption that it was professionally created, because it felt too clean to be genuine. Perhaps others did the same.

Why couldn’t they just be up-front about it?

Posted by stilist on 20 November 2008 @ 9pm

“Since marketing is usually necessary for a company’s survival”

Is it, though? I’ve been involved in many projects that succeed by simply talking about what they’re doing in an authentic, excited way. And I’m not the only one. 37 Signals, Threadless, and countless others do zero marketing. They just kick ass, and people notice.

When you make a great product and have excellent customer service, your product markets itself.

Posted by Derek Powazek on 21 November 2008 @ 12am

Derek, those things _are_ marketing though – the process of figuring out who/where your market is, and how to communicate with them so they know what you’re doing and why it’s good. Threadless and 37signals IMHO do not a lot besides marketing, in the form of t-shirt contests, snarky blog posts, and other general talking-to-the-world under the company name and banner.

No product has ever marketed itself.

That said I think you’re right about the video. It’s weak how coy it is about its own origin, it doesn’t talk to us using the company name. It’d be interesting if ad companies were more secure in their own role, and proudly declared their participation in these things. But then again I’m one of those people who think that MS are shifty cowards for abandoning the Seinfeld ad campaign right when it was all getting interesting. That’s why they’re not Apple or Google I suppose.

Posted by Michal Migurski on 21 November 2008 @ 1am

Newspapers and magazines label advertisements because they are, ostensibly, a source of unbiased journalism.

YouTube makes no such promise.

Posted by Paul on 21 November 2008 @ 4am

I agree with most of what’s above – companies shouldn’t be participating in subterfuge. But I’ve got to disagree with Derek’s comment above:

“Is it, though? I’ve been involved in many projects that succeed by simply talking about what they’re doing in an authentic, excited way. And I’m not the only one. 37 Signals, Threadless, and countless others do zero marketing.”

They may not do much *advertising* but 37 Signals – and a lot of other companies – market themselves very, very well. In fact, I’d say 37 Signals in particular are masters at marketing. Let’s just define terms and be sure what we’re talking about – advertising is one thing, and putting out ads and calling them user-generated-content is misleading and, IMO, unethical.

But I’d argue that marketing IS necessary for a company’s survival – they just (like the companies mentioned above) need to do so in an ethical manner.

Posted by Angie McKaig on 21 November 2008 @ 7am

“I’ve been involved in many projects that succeed by simply talking about what they’re doing in an authentic, excited way.”

Except that that _is_ marketing. You might not be making promo videos, buying banner ads, or holding huge press conferences, but the act of promoting a product (authentic or not) is still marketing. If you really did “zero” marketing, nobody would ever find out about your product, no matter how awesome it was. The marketing might be more subtle, and/or less traditional, but it’s still there in some form or other.

Posted by Daniel McCullum on 21 November 2008 @ 8am

i think your analogy to magazines is wrong. magazines put those notes there because they don’t want their reputation to be put on-the-line for something they didn’t create, not because they believe ads are, in essence, bad. personally i believe finding out it’s an ad does detract from its value, but not significantly. i mean wouldn’t it be great if all advertisers spent their money on making something cool first and an ad second?

Posted by ben on 21 November 2008 @ 9am

@Derek

Yes, marketing is completely necessary for survival. Your last comment references 37 Signals, but isn’t their blog a marketing effort? And what about the affiliate programs they recently launched? I think you could even make the case that all their product development and outreach (speaking at conferences/meeting hundreds of users) are pieces of a marketing plan as well. They just do it in a different way than a straight advertising model.

It doesn’t matter how kick ass your product is if no one knows it exists.

On the other hand, this is a great point. The fact that something is labeled as advertising doesn’t take away from the quality of the content. Advertisers need to understand that when you’re working online, the user is king. Respect the user, be transparent, and that will lead to the best chance to succeed.

Posted by Eric Nelson on 21 November 2008 @ 9am

37s and Threadless may not be booking superbowl commercials or getting ad placement in Esquire/New York Times/Quahog Shopper, but they are most certainly engaging in marketing.

The marketing they engage in, however, is honest and earnest, and seen in things like their blogs. One of the intriguing differences between traditional advertising and Threadless/37s/etc is that people go to the latter to be marketed to.

Posted by Darren James Harkness on 21 November 2008 @ 10am

Okay! I give! Yes, what I call “authentic, excited communication” could be seen as “marketing” if you look at the world that way. But so can everything. This is my personal blog, but you could say I’m “marketing myself” with it. (I wouldn’t buy you a beer anymore, though.)

But this is a semantic debate and I hate semantic debates. We all know the difference between a late night infomercial and a personal blog. You can run a company, be excited about what you do, and talk about it authentically online. And you should!

What you shouldn’t do is lie to your customers, fool them with a ruse, and then think that helps you somehow. Whatever you call it, we all know how it feels to be lied to.

Posted by Derek Powazek on 21 November 2008 @ 11am

I think the fact that it’s done by an ad agency absolutely detracts from the value of the video.

Watching it for the first time, it reminded me of when I was younger and had enough free time on my hands to get a bunch of friends together and do something silly like that. Thinking it’s the work of amateurs who were making the video to have some fun adds to the excitement of the video. You find yourself rooting for the people who made the video, hoping they can pull off the whole song.

Consequently, watching the video knowing it was made by professionals detracts from the experience. The times when the cameraperson looks away from the bike or steers off-track seem less charming. Knowing that the people throwing confetti and holding the banner at the end were probably paid makes the whole thing feel less spontaneous. And thinking about the video further, you can’t help but speculate about whether or not some post-production trickery was employed to make the song match the video better.

While source of the video shouldn’t, in theory, detract from its aesthetic value, but there are a lot of “meta” issues that add to and distract from the enjoyment of any art. Would Van Gogh’s famous bandaged self-portrait be as great if the viewer didn’t already know he sliced off part of his ear? Would Hemingway’s work be less revered if he was actually a blue-blood phony who never traveled?

Posted by Greg on 21 November 2008 @ 11am

People like being lied to: that’s why there is fiction. (But wait, you cry, in fiction, we know it isn’t real – there’s no deceit)
Frankly, it your default position on web content is that it represents reality, you are frequently going to feel disappointed or betrayed. As Paul said above: YouTube makes no claim to be unbiased, truthful, and nor should it, and nor should the users feel obliged to. The web as a content platform has no hard lines between reportage and fantasy, and everything should be taken with a healthy measure of scepticism.

The fact is, Bike Hero (the concept) is less awesome as CG rather than home-video, so the makers decided to present it as the latter. It is a deceit, but no more so than “This is based on a true story” at the beginning of Fargo, or the “this is a translation of an old manuscript I found” at the beginning of countless novels. Discover the truth if you must, but don’t let it ruin your enjoyment of the story.

Posted by Desmond Hume on 21 November 2008 @ 1pm

I call bullshit. When you go to a movie, you know it’s fiction the moment you walk in.

I don’t require truth in all things. I just hate when advertising pretends it’s not advertising.

And more to the point, as marketing, Bike Hero would have been more successful if it’d been honest about what it was from the get-go, not less. Remember the Honda ad? It was truthful about what it was, and still passed around the net endlessly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc

(Aside to Desmond: Love your show, brother.)

Posted by Derek Powazek on 21 November 2008 @ 1pm

My point is that on the internet, you’ve already walked in. Everything you read and see has a tacit “this may be fictitious” disclaimer. Consider the perspective that the video description, the user account itself, wasn’t a lie, but a framing story for the video. They felt that to make all that meta-data part of the marketing would make it more effective (or believable, or authentic, or whatever).

Whether it would have been more successful done “honestly”, I’m not sure. It may have been taken more enthusiastically by serious marketing type blogs, but perhaps less so (or more cynically) by the youth/social-networking/meme-jumping crowds. And the latter is clearly the target demographic here.

Or maybe the deception and subsequent leak were planned as well, to keep the meme alive that bit longer…

Posted by Desmond Hume on 21 November 2008 @ 3pm

I’ve told my parents, clients, and friends the same thing many times: Assume that everything you read on the internet is being said by a man in a mask. So, philosophically, we agree. The problem is, most internet users are not as savvy as we are.

There’s an implicit assumption in “user-generated content” that nobody was paid to make it. Right or wrong, that assumption is there, and it’s not the same assumption people have when they walk into a movie theater.

Maybe someday that assumption will be gone. Personally, I think that’s kind of sad. The thing that makes the internet compelling to me is the idea that there are real people, like me, out there sharing their unmediated thoughts. We shouldn’t allow corporations and marketeers to pervert that.

Maybe that’s idealistic – I’ve been called worse – and ultimately the internet will lose its collective naiveté. If so, I’ll be glad I was here to experience it before the innocence was lost.

Posted by Derek Powazek on 21 November 2008 @ 5pm

A friend of mine recently pointed out that a great example of what Derek was talking about can be found here http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii Nintendo doesn’t try to hide that this is official content at all, but that doesn’t reduce its fun… For me, at least, it actually had the opposite effect — making me think Nintendo and whatever agency put this together are all the cooler for coming up with and executing the concept.

Posted by Jake on 24 November 2008 @ 10pm