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.

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…

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.)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.