Joho and MSFT's own Scoble rip MSN for a "viral" marketing campaign that includes phony blogs extolling MSN Search from deeply, deeply contrived "hip" characters. It's lame corporate marketing at its worst. Dooohhh! Update: Aaron Pressman makes a point: MSN's big TV campaign may well help Google….
Joho and MSFT’s own Scoble rip MSN for a “viral” marketing campaign that includes phony blogs extolling MSN Search from deeply, deeply contrived “hip” characters. It’s lame corporate marketing at its worst. Dooohhh!
Update: Aaron Pressman makes a point: MSN’s big TV campaign may well help Google.
Sadly, even though it’s getting the kind of attention normally reserved for slow motion train wrecks, it’s still getting attention.
I’m betting that someone over at MSN marketing is probably dancing because of the spike in page views.
I agree that the concept is pretty sophomoric– with a “conspiracy theorist”, “matchmaker”, etc — and the execution fairly shallow… But with a marketing message to deliver (new search capabilities) and blogging starting to reach mainstream proportions, I can see MSFT’s rationale for going in this direction. As such, I wouldn’t necessarily crown it as “lame corporate marketing at it’s worst”.
What part(s) of it do you think are ill-conceived, and what would you do to create a more effective campaign?