Remember the enthusiastic email I received the other day pointing me to the Huffington Post/JWT collaboration, whereby their ads are running online in a "unique promotion"? At the time I got the feeling that I was being spammed, but didn't have the time or energy to do a lengthy debunk.
Luckily someone else did :) (Tim Nudd, this one's for you)
UPDATE: You know, to be fair, it looks like Jonah Peretti and the guys from the Huff Post are the ones behind the spamming, not the ad agency. I wonder if they guaranteed "viral play" to JWT as part of the six figure deal, and are now using a bank of interns to astroturf blogs. It really makes me want to weep - only 12 months ago YBNBY championed the Contagious Media Festival that Peretti set up, giving it extensive reviews. Now, he seems to be making all the mistakes he once warned about in his workshops. And Adriana obviously sells out pretty cheap too - for the last two days she been blogging about how cosy she's been getting with JWT in Cannes in a very revolutionary, changing-the-face-of-advertising kind of way. Checkbook journalism at its finest.
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I don't think it is right to make a distinction between who is doing what. If JWT is paying for it, then they are ultimately responsible for what is done in their name.
What this really shows is a shocking level of ignorance about net culture.
Muggler - I knew you, above all people, would be shocked :)
To build upon what TheMuggler had to say about who is/isn't ultimately responsible:
There's no one innocent in situations like these. The advertisement driven model for the web encourages this sort of behaviour and much worse. Look at the amount of advertising on this site alone.
It's become an anything goes marketing farm out here on the web. Ethics and business don't always go hand in hand I'm sure you realize. This is small 'taters compared to what lies ahead. :( -- Jā
I don't think it's an issue of the ad driven model failing per se, but rather a case of an over zelous marketer trying to desguise an ad as legitimate commentary. It's one thing to spam bloggers with PR junk, but to publically leave spam on a site leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The ironic part is that they are moderated the comments when we should be the ones moderating their comments.
Someone needs to infrom JWT about HuffPo spamming the blogs in their name. HuffPo knows they ripped off JWT majorly and are trying to make it appear like they are getting their money's worth.
I tried, but their website is one of the worst I have ever seen. I dare you to get an email off of the jwt site. It's impossible.
Cynda
I received a video from JWT/THP and was beyond insulted.
If you read Arianna on Friday in THP, it was pretty obvious that JWT knew what she was doing.
As a "grassroots" blogger I don't take to things like this well. They never answered my email, and I probably shouldn't have done a post around it as that's what they want. But I hope the negativity in posts about this generate bad will not good buzz
JWT and Huff don't get Consumer Generated Media. Now if JetBlue thought about it, why not reach out to web content creators and contributors and ask them to create a funny video. Instead they went to an old age ad firm. Jetblue should reach out to the creators and consumers of web media not suites in ivory towers.