Sony / Zipatoni and bollocks web marketing
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: December 13th, 2006 Published in: Branding, Link Baiting, SEO Agencies, Spam, Viral MarketingHat tip to DG for this one - Sony hired a marketing company to churn out a shitty fake “fan site” for the PSP on the run up to Xmas. Just reading the story churns my stomache, but when I actually had a look at the site I laughed my ass off.
OK Sony. So you screwed up in the console wars. You had some idiot develop your strategy and based it entirely on the fact that consumers may buy the PS3 later in the year, missing the Xmas market (and your main competitors’ feeding frenzy) on the sole basis that your Blu Ray crap would be a major USP. And you were doing so well with the PS1 and PS2….what happened?
There’s no need for this kind of crap. I’d class “all I want for Xmas is a PSP” dotcom as a bloody stupid and naive attempt at viral marketing. What were wou thinking?
It is so bloody transparent!
DO SOME RESEARCH!
How many fansites actually stoop so low in branding that they would refer to themselves in such a stupid and inappropriate way? Oh no wait, sorry, every Metal band does a Xmas song lamenting to some two bit lame hand held. And yeh EVERY fansite has a “letter” from a 12 year old detailing his quest to help his mate’s mum buy him a PSP for Xmas.
Stupid bloody lame corporate ignorance.
Jeeez - even the stupid post with the “print this and put it in x, y or z’s magazine to give them the hint” has the alt text “Print_Ad”….. Uh..hello?
Your marketing agency (Zipatoni) are idiots. Yeh, here’s an idea, let’s hire an agency using a fully flash site to conduct our web marketing campaign - that’s a great idea! They clearly know what they’re doing.
Hmm let’s not be too brutal here - maybe they don’t know what they were doing? Perhaps I should email them? That would seem to be the thing to do…
(let’s side step the fact that this marketing agency actually own the viral domain for a second - no need to bring ethics into this…)
So I sent this email to meredith.goette@zipatoni.com and also copied it into scee_presscentre@scee.net (the Sony UK press centre):
Hi Meredith,
I don’t really want to “activate my campaign” as the big, bold text on your flash site suggested as I clicked it, but I thought I would send a message anyway.
I just want to chat about the Sony PSP viral campaign at http://www.alliwantforxmasisapsp.com/blog/ - interesting stuff. But none of it is really…well…real, now is it?
As a marketing professional, I’ve got to point out that this campaign is highly unlikely to meet it’s apparent objectives before Xmas. Aside from being insanely transparent, the blog site really only serves to create a vastly negative impression of the PSP since your involvement has been ousted on various blogs.
Obviously, viral marketing is a tricky area - particularly on the web where people are able view information like the OWNER of the site and so forth.
At this point, you may want to read the comments in the links I posted on my blog - they are very revealing. You can find the post here: http://www.fusednation.com/seo/sony-and-bollocks-web-marketing/
Feel free to get back to me if you would like to discuss the proper way to market to consumers online - ie, not assume they are idiots.
Kind Regards
Scott Boyd
www.fusednation.com
Perhaps a little harsh, but they screwed up big time and for a major client. If anyone from the Sony PR team are reading this - send me an email and get in touch and I’ll happlily show you how to do it properly - maybe even grab some of the vast market share you just lost.
Here is some of the forum / blogger community’s response to the Sony viral marketing campaign:
- Digg - Sony and bollocks web marketing
- Digg - Awful viral marketing site
- Digg - Sony creates a fake blog as viral marketing
- Sony takes viral marketing to a new low
- Sony pays for fake Xmas wishes
- PSP site the new loneygirl?
- Another flog is exposed
What do you think? IMO, even pretty looking crap is still spam and it doesn’t matter if it is big brand or some piece of rubbish churned out by your average webaster!
UPDATE (14th Dec): They’ve owned up on the blog, but kinda half heartedly so. Dean puts it well:
I certainly don’t think they got caught because their speech was too ‘funky fresh’. More likely it was because it didn’t ring true. Kids are pretty adept at figuring out who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.
One funny part of the statement:
Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever.
Um. No. What actually happened is that you hired an agency that doesn’t have a fucking clue how to market on the web. I don’t think either Sony or Zipatoni were every in danger of being “too clever”. Their site has to be the most transparent piece of crap I’ve ever seen.
Their l33t sp33k wasn’t even close to the fanboi-esque style they were trying to hit and fails as miserably as their half assed ‘fess up fails to salvage any dignity from the situation.
And I bet it all sounded really great on paper! 
UPDATE 14th Dec (again): The site is down. Guess Sony finally bitch slapped Zipatoni.
MG
Comments
I think you’re spot on. What amazes me the most is that this type of effort had to be cleared by top people at both Zipatoni and Sony. How does something like that happen? How blind can people be?
It is insane. Corporate marketing clearly think consumers are morons and treat that way.
What is more nuts is that if they simply treated their customers with a bit of respect they would get so much more back from it.
But no - the whole marketing agency focus these days seems to be - sell the product to the brand and to hell with the consumers! But then again, that does make marketing sense (from an agency point of view) - they get the sale!
I think a large part of the problem in this case is sheer lack of knowledge and experience with online marketing on the part of the agency - I know agency diligence procedures - this kind of thing shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
What probably happened is the agency was approached to meet this objective (derived from the client) and they pitched the fact that they could do it (to get the business), when they were actually flirting with new territory.
MG
I bet you’re right. They saw themselves as on the brink of being ‘cutting edge’ but didn’t really understand how to use social media as a marketing insturment. And they then treated their client’s customer base as if they were idiots.
By the way, the guy in the videos on the site looks like a Zipatoni employee. Check out http://www.zipatoni.com > navigation > who we are > leadership. They’ve got a video on the page and the guy seems to be named Derek Burr.
For the record, and not to brag, but I blogged about the Edelman fiasco and I ended up getting a response from a former Edelman staffer who had worked on the account (but who left before the incident) who told me I nailed it.
http://digitalstreetjournal.com/?p=146
In the meantime, from the comments on the blog to the comments on YouTube, both Sony and Ziparoni are getting completely trashed.
It’s one of those deals that make you angry. At first I thought it pissed me off because of some sort of odd notion about the inviolability of Christmas.
Turns out it was simply the idea, coupled with poor execution that makes me angry.
Even if they were operating under the assumption that any publicity is good publicity, in this case, they were wrong. People don’t like feeling like they’ve been had. Then again, the execution was so poor, no one was taken in.
The fools even left the comments unmoderated on the site…
“All Sony wants for Xmas is a new Ad agency”
Added an update - they’ve “come out” on the flog. Crappy response - doesn’t deserve another link.
MG
Their attitude is that this is all water under the bridge. No apology for faking it, for the insulting videos. A “we have nothing to apologize for” mentality, while praising themselves and their products. They haven’t learned a damn thing.
Yeh just typical corporate bullshit.
PSP terms are fairly competitive, but I’m sure a well optimised page or two and enough link love from Sony’s customers may change their mind.
MG
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