You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette

They look like the real thing, until...

Alongside the growth in viral advertising, hoaxing and hijacking of familiar campaigns is increasingly commonplace, but is it all what it seems, and if you do it, what can you expect?

Small but tough

“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.” Yep. So say Lee and Dan. They made the Volkswagen ad with the suicide bomber that wasn’t supposed to be seen, but was, then they were going to get the book thrown at them, but didn’t, and had to say sorry, but aren’t, really.

It’s Bore Me’s most watched viral, and to be fair, is probably going to be remembered as a epochal bit of work where the underground and mainstream ad worlds touched noses, like Eskimos.

See, the quality of the ad was comparable to a bona-fide campaign, not just the production values, but the story arc, the pacing, the simplicity of the idea, the final punch of the “small but tough” VW line. Yet it wasn’t one. It had been made as a calling card, part of a showreel, and leaked out mysteriously. Yes, the device was tasteless: so much so that VW had no trouble disclaiming all knowledge.

Have you heard the rumours?

But the internet is home to more than ads, spoofs of ads, hijacked campaigns. Like the village where Miss Marple lives, its chief currency is rumour, and rumour increasingly has it that not all companies who have had this happen are that upset, privately.

It’s like the flipside to those Nationwide ads with that jovial bloke who was in Vic and Bob’s Catterick: I think of him now as the Nationwide manager, and don’t want anything to do with them. Lee and Dan’s ad, by contrast, is far more memorable than the real campaign it hoaxed.

It’s not alone. Hoaxes of Mastercard’s ‘Priceless’ ads were not, it was suggested, entirely against the company’s wishes. And it makes sense: put stuff out on the web within a brand identity, and you lose control of it. Allow a few carefully seeded hoaxes alongside, and you get notoriety. These memorable ads will still subliminally push your product, but you take away the opportunity to hoax them.

“In some cases, it could appeal to your audience and introduce you to new ones,” reckons Harry Cymbler of Hot Cherry PR, who’ve worked with top names in the viral field. “It could help to build credibility.”

Most of this is simply speculation, but Lee and Dan are aware of the twilight zone of ‘no such thing as bad publicity’: “It’s the people who are employed with the task of guarding the brand that are scared of this sort of activity, as they like to control every aspect of how we perceive their brands. Whether or not a brand can be damaged by spoofing though is debatable.”

All up for grabs

“A hijacking can damage credibility,” disagrees Cymbler “Just think of the infamous Carlsberg email. During 2004’s European Cup, they sent out an email saying ‘Carlsberg don’t send emails but if they did, they’d probably be the best emails in the world.’ It was hijacked and the words: ‘shame the lager tastes like piss’ were added.”

This is what the internet probably does best. Word-of-mouth, ingenuity and the tools at your fingertips, mean all content is at risk of, um, adjustment. Particularly aggressive advertising, like the Carlsberg email, is more at risk than most, since it is easier to perceive it as intrusive.

Undermine its corporate bullishness, however, and you have a brilliant ready-made viral.

This is not to say that all this activity is negative: Apple’s iPod campaign was hijacked, but by people who really liked iPods. Ah!

“The iPod-hijacked virals contributed to the positive and natural word-of-mouth Apple created for itself,” suggests Cymbler. “Hijacking can be a form of flattery. In this case, the hijack added to the brand’s global iconic image and credibility.”

What’s the damage?

No problems doing it then, eh? Well no. I mean, yes there are problems doing it. Unsurprisingly, enormous international corporations who spend a fortune, literally, every year on marketing, PR and advertising get a bit restless if people start monkeying around with their brand image. “

Our experience has taught us that the law is open to lots of different interpretations,” say Lee and Dan. “Yes there probably are legal consequences if you step over the line.” They’re being diplomatic, having got away with apologising to Volkswagen. It’s risky calling a company’s bluff over PR, though.

Beyond this, there are still issues to bear in mind about copyright of material, nature of content, and so on. Despite the way it may sometimes appear, the internet is not a free-for-all when it comes to content appearing on it.

“Copyright laws apply the same to the internet as elsewhere, as do libel laws, incitement to hatred etc.” explains Henry Cowling of The Viral Factory. Rob Wakeman of Bore Me adds: “The practice of borrowing content without permission is widespread, though this is illegal. Using someone else’s music as a soundtrack on your movie is also subject to copyright.”

Ultimately, it’s your call, but either way, it could be an expensive one. The talked-about spoofs are the quality ones: they’re an investment of time, money and imagination.

On one level they flatter their corporate targets by tacitly agreeing that investment in these areas to sell stuff to people is good. These spoofs are rarely, some might say disappointingly rarely, political.

There’s probably not a lot to worry about, really, from a company’s point of view if their target audience are sitting at home spending their own money on making commercials for them. Notoriety can prove a bit of a millstone, too.

It’ll always happen, mind you.

Links:

Hot Cherry: www.hotcherry.co.uk
Bore Me: www.boreme.com
Lee and Dan: www.leeanddan.com
The Viral Factory: www.theviralfactory.com