guerrilla marketing

Writing for AdWeek, Andrew Adam Newman reports that a deceptive PR campaign on behalf of the Coach bag company has become "the latest illustration of how a buzz-seeking stunt may backfire." Led by Paul Werth Associates, an Ohio PR firm, the "International AntiCounterfeiting Campaign" (IACC) sought to discourage people from buying knockoff handbags. As part of the campaign, Coach persuaded Hunter College in New York to offer a public relations class which invented a fictional student named "Heidi Cee." They created blog postings, a YouTube video and MySpace pages in which Heidi Cee complained that she had been ripped off when she bought a fake Coach handbag. The campaign also claimed that counterfeit products are linked to criminal activity, child labor and terrorism. The revelation that Heidi Cee was a counterfeit herself has drawn criticism, and college officials and Coach are now trying to distance themselves from the fakery. These denials drew scoffs from Sarah El-Edlibi, one of the students who participated in the class. According to El-Edlibi, "the entire PR team from Coach was in the class" egging the students on. "We were supposed to be working for Coach, who was the client, and they really liked the idea of making someone fake. If they had some ethical issues with it, they should have said so. If there was anybody who could have stopped it, it would have been Coach."

Additional details have surfaced about the story we mentioned last month regarding a corporate-sponsored hoax at Hunter College. The college receives donations from the Coach Corporation, a manufacturer of handbags, shoes and other women's accessories. In particular, Coach funded a "guerrilla marketing" class that "educated" students about the dangers of knockoff products by creating a fictional student named "Heidi Cee" who claimed that she had been conned by a counterfeit Coach handbag. "The professor who taught it says that he was pressured to do so even though he has no expertise in advertising or public relations (he teaches computer graphics) and had ethical qualms about the course," reports Scott Jaschik. "Further, the professor -- and other professors who have investigated the circumstances of the course -- maintain that the professor was required to teach only one side of the issue, had to accept industry officials watching him teach, and had little clout to fight back since he didn't (and still doesn't) have tenure." According to Hunter professor Stuart Ewen, the lessons in deception were designed by Paul Werth Associates, an Ohio-based PR firm working for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a Coach-funded organization.

Hunter College professor Stuart Ewen is crying foul about an "anti-counterfeiting campaign" sponsored on his campus by the Coach Corporation, a manufacturer of handbags, shoes and other women's accessories. To "educate" students about the dangers of knockoff imitatators, Coach paid the university to host a course in "stealth marketing" that involved plastering the campus with fake flyers about the problems of a fictional student named "Heidi Cee," who claimed that she had been conned by a counterfeit Coach handbag. "A corporation-funded university class with a curriculum created by corporate lobbyists is questionable enough," writes Ben Kessler. "According to Ewen, it appears that the class was the result of a direct request made by the president of the university to the department head. No tenured teachers were told about the department's new curricular direction; an untenured (therefore more pliable) faculty member with no marketing background was selected to teach the class. The anointed instructor voiced objections ... but ended up teaching the course anyway, with continuous supervision from a Coach lawyer. At no time, the Coach overseer stipulated, was the company's involvement to be mentioned in any of the completed class projects." The class assignments focused on creating an elaborate fabric of lies using "authentic-seeming fliers, social networking websites, and a blog" supposedly written by "Heidi Cee," in which the fictional student begged real students to help her find her missing Coach handbag and talked about the problem of fake products. When Ewen questioned the Ohio-based public relations firm that created the course about Heidi Cee's fabrications, they replied, "That's what kids do these days: create fake people on the internet."

The Huffington Post and TPM Muckraker highlight the newest activities of Roger Stone, whose past includes a stint as the "youngest dirty trickster" for Richard Nixon and a recent alleged prank call to Eliot Spitzer's father. Stone has formed a new 527 campaign group with a name that forms an obscene acronym. The group's purpose, according to Stone, is simply to sell T-shirts associating Hillary Clinton with that expletive. Stone praises 527's as a campaign vehicle: "A 527 doesn't have a wife.. It doesn't have a brother-in-law who knows a lot about politics, or a union president who calls and doesn't like the color of the suit, or bimbo eruptions. It's the perfect candidate, because it has no personal characteristics."

Fineman PR of San Francisco, California, has released their list of top ten PR blunders of 2007. Topping the list at number one is "No Reporters? No Problem" -- the fake news conference staged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) about their response to the California wild fires. (FEMA also merited a Dishonorable Mention in CMD's 2007 Falsies Awards.) Coming in second was a poorly conceived guerrilla marketing campaign. "When Boston residents suddenly noted blinking, cryptic devices attached to bridges, bus depots and subway stations, they alerted city authorities, who shut down sections of the city to remove the devices and ensure that they were not related to a bomb threat or other terrorist activity." The culprit? The Turner Broadcasting-affiliated Cartoon Network, advertising their program "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

Last week we started a new participatory project to expose the government agencies, corporations and lobbying groups that have been censoring, whitewashing or otherwise spinning Wikipedia. (See CMD Senior Researcher Diane Farsetta's great blog post for some background on this sordid tale.) So far we've logged several attempts at spin into the respective SourceWatch profiles, including:

• Chevron deleting the article on "Biodiesel";
• Military contractor Raytheon deleting information on them spying on their competitors and the U.S. Air Force;
• Republican-friendly broadcaster Clear Channel adding allegations of plagiarism to Democratic Senate Candidate Al Franken's profile;
• PR firm Hill & Knowlton removing descriptions of the political repression by the government of the Maldives, an H&K client;
• Amway parent company Alticor removing descriptions of the company's use of "Google bombing" to drive down the search engine rankings of Web sites critical of the company;
• Electronic voting machine company Diebold removing descriptions of the controversies surrounding their machines' failures and glitches;
• Conservative news network Fox News changing Keith Olbermann's profile (and not in a good way - see Olbermann's reaction on this video);

The information here is obviously very important and, thanks to SourceWatch's high rankings in Google searches, easily accessible to citizens, journalists and policymakers checking out the record of these politically active and high social-impact organizations. There are many dastardly edits left, however, and we need your help to make sure they aren't lost to history. There's no need for technical expertise, just head over to the SourceWatch page for the project, where there are complete instructions, examples and an email hotline for support. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here.

Stephanie Saule reports that "Innerstate, a documentary about three people coping with disabling chronic illness, may be coming to a theater near you. If so, admission will be free, courtesy of the drug maker that produced the film. The 58-minute film ... is an unusual form of soft-pedal marketing of a blockbuster drug, Remicade. The documentary never specifically mentions Remicade, or the product’s maker, Centocor, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. Instead, it focuses on several of the autoimmune diseases Remicade is approved to treat: rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. ... The film, directed by Chris Valentino and produced by the Creative Group, is the latest twist on a business trend toward blending advertising and entertainment."

Turner Broadcasting apologized "for a marketing campaign that sparked Boston's biggest security scare since the September 11, 2001, attacks -- closing bridges, shutting major roads and putting hundreds of police on alert." The "outdoor marketing campaign" promoting an Adult Swim cartoon "had been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia." Boston police feared that the magnetic lightboards of cartoon characters might be bombs. According to PR Week, Turner Broadcasting has "hired outside PR and legal counsel" to recover from its "marketing stunt gone bad." Turner "declined to name the agency" it hired for PR assistance, and said it had not yet decided whether to continue to work with Interference, the agency that developed the lightboard campaign. Associated Press reports that Turner has "agreed to pay $2 million" to local Boston and Massachusetts state agencies.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission directed "companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers," to "disclose those relationships." Otherwise, it could be deceptive marketing, as people are more likely to trust product endorsers "based on their assumed independence from the marketer," according to the FTC. While the FTC will examine potentially deceptive word-of-mouth marketing on a case-by-case basis, the agency rejected a request from the watchdog group Commercial Alert to review industry practices. The head of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) called the FTC's decision "an endorsement of the industry's efforts to police itself." Advertising Age reports that the FTC ruling "could lead to increased spending" on word-of-mouth marketing. O'Dwyer's PR Daily calls the ruling a victory for WOMMA, which had "urged the FTC to note the difference between buzz marketing, which it supports and promotes, and stealth marketing, which it opposes."

Animals Australia advertisement

Plans by the non-profit group, Animals Australia, to run full colour advertisements in major magazines highlighting cruelty to factory-farmed pigs received a setback when several publications refused to accept the ads. One ad, titled Traumatised Suckling Piglet with Severed Tail, states "within the first week of its life, surgically mutilate piglet. Snip off tail and cut eye teeth without administering pain relief. Ignore screams. Forcibly remove from mother after 3 to 4 weeks and stuff into crowded pen. Marinate indoors for entire life. Serves 4." Some magazines, such as Australian Women's Weekly, accepted the ads. However, the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend Magazine, which is known for its strong editorial feature articles, refused to accept the ads on the grounds that they are inappropriate and denied it was in response to any advertiser influence. Last weekend's edition of the magazine featured two double-page, full-colour advertisements promoting the health benefits of red meat consumption.