ESPN Football's Bizarre Viral Marketing?

LilSerf writes "Four days before Sega debuted their new 'first-person football' feature for ESPN Football 2K4, a mysterious personality called Beta-7 premiered a site detailing the injuries he suffered as a beta-tester for the game. The site is a blog going back to March 21, 2003, the day he first claims to have tested the game and blacked out as a result. The story includes mysterious packages from other injured testers, surveillance footage of his 'episodes', and bootleg video of the 'secret' game features - suspiciously not posted until after the official announcement by Sega. Consensus in the boards on his site seems to be that this is a hoax by Sega - what do Slashdot readers think?"

Comments

A Fairly Ham-Fisted Hoax.

[joe90]

From the domain registrars whois db:

"The data contained in Go Daddy Software, Inc.'s WHOIS database,while believed by the company to be reliable, is provided "as is"with no guarantee or warranties regarding its accuracy. Thisinformation is provided for the sole purpose of assisting youin obtaining information about domain name registration records.Any use of this data for any other purpose is expressly forbidden without the prior writtenpermission of Go Daddy Software, Inc. By submitting an inquiry,you agree to these terms of usage and limitations of warranty. In particular,you agree not to use this data to allow, enable, or otherwise make possible,dissemination or collection of this data, in part or in its entirety, for anypurpose, such as the transmission of unsolicited advertising andand solicitations of any kind, including spam. You further agreenot to use this data to enable high volume, automated or robotic electronicprocesses designed to collect or compile this data for any purpose,including mining this data for your own personal or commercial purposes. Please note: the owner of the domain name is specifiedin the "registrant" field. In most cases, Go Daddy Software, Inc. is not the owner of domain names listed in this database.Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States Registered through: Go Daddy Software (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: BETA-7.COM Created on: 18-Jun-03 Expires on: 18-Jun-04 Last Updated on: 19-Jun-03 Administrative Contact: Private, Registration BETA-7.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Technical Contact: Private, Registration BETA-7.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Domain servers in listed order: NS.RACKSPACE.COM NS2.RACKSPACE.COM"

It's only been registered for about 3 weeks.

A slip-up?

[Anonymous Coward]

In one of his comments on the last news articles, he put his email down as beta-7@sega.com.

'nuff said.

Re:I know where the mystery packages came from

[Dachannien]

God, Reebok actually did this already once, and it was way funnier that time. Sound and everything. How lame.

(I would provide a link, but it's registration-required.)

GMD Studios

[jafuser]

http://www.beta-7.com/blog/archives/000003.html which has a comment written by a "Jim" who's name links to GMD Studios, a "groundbreaking new media production firm based in Orlando, Florida".

More werid crap can be found by replacing the "000003" in the URL with any other padded number in that general vicinity.

I'll admit I like the approach. It's kind of a bit entertaining to see a marketing company which blatantly badmouths it's client in it's marketing material (even if it is part of the plan) =)