Guerrilla Marketing

The True Story of a Bogus Blog

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.

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Presidential Election Season Brings New, More Stupid 527 Groups

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

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An Industry Look at 2007's Biggest PR Blunders

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.

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Featured Participatory Project: Help Expose the Attempts to Spin Wikipedia (Week 2)

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:

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Drug Gets a Cameo in a Film Backed by Its Maker

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.

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Guerrilla Marketing Gone Bad in Boston

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.

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