Corporate. Dishonest. Evil.

I'm amazed how much effort they put into making the "Raging Cow" website look like a real pesonal weblog. It makes me even more disguisted by the idea.

-Posted by Joshua Kaufman on March 4, 2003 08:54 AM

Anil addresses the situation, and notes that...

people will continue to use the subjective analysis of a weblogger's entire site and inbound links from friends as judgement over the credibility of their writing.

-Posted by Dan on March 4, 2003 02:46 PM

I'm not so sure I'd call it evil, and I definitely think it's pretty interesting. Then again, its not new, and I don't think viral marketing has to be as secretive as you say.

Look at the hardcore music scene, everyone wears heavily branded Adidas or Puma apparel and shoes. Why? Because the artists do, and the scene has essentially adopted the brand as its own. Most fans are (hopefully) aware that the artists get the merchandise for free (or are paid to wear it). This hasn't really stopped people from refusing to wear any other brand, or wear non-branded clothes. Keep in mind these are the same people that have distaste for major record labels, in what would appear to be a contradiction.

It seems apparent that the ragingcow target audience is teenager, and youth marketing is extrememly competitive, thus encouraging marketers to take "bolder" steps.

Come to think of it, is this even viral marketing? I thought viral was a promotion of a product/service by the use of that product/service, the textbook case being the appending of taglines on mails sent by web email providers, or the recipent of a collect call hearing "You have an AT&T collect call from..."

-Posted by Eric on March 4, 2003 02:53 PM

No, it's not evil, and ramming advertisements down easily impressionable elementary school students' throats is perfectly okay. It's the same thing. Unfortunately, a lot of bloggers aren't going to know the difference between real content and corporate advertisements.

Advertising disguised as an innocent teen blog is dishonest. You're right; it's not evil. It's corporate America at its finest, and it stinks.

-Posted by Joshua Kaufman on March 4, 2003 04:35 PM

I made a few comments about this on my site today, as well.

Because I'm intrigued by this attempt to market via blogs, I've done some research on this today.

Here are a link to the 6 blogs they've co-opted:

http://www.aboutagirl.org

http://www.suchadork.net

http://www.aboutagirl.org

http://www.kelleyrogers.com

http://www.italianize.com

www.sparkley.net

Notice they all have the same Raging Cow tile somewhere on their site. I started to read one and came across some random link within the text linking to the Raging Cow site, that weren't even relevant to it.

Here's a link to the agency responsible for this program:
http://www.richardsi.com

And here's where bloggers can register to become shills:
http://www.projectblogger.com

-Posted by Benjy on March 4, 2003 05:06 PM

With all of the discussion and postings going on about this, I think that Dr. Pepper has gotten (at least in part) what they want - by posting this to any site and fostering any subsequent discussions, aren't we contributing to the viral nature of the marketing scam? I mean, it's like wrapping a teenager in a Joe Camel t-shirt (IMHO). The kid may not smoke, but because their parent has saved enough Camel cash, they get a new shirt and hence are free advertising. We're part of the problem here folks...

-Posted by Anthony on March 4, 2003 05:14 PM

Heh, yeah, yer right. Awareness of the product in the blogging community is probably near 100% by now. And like GI Joe says, 'knowing is half the battle.'

Brilliant.

-Posted by Dan on March 4, 2003 07:05 PM