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

Re:I'll tell you what I think...

[quinkin]

When it comes to "viral marketing" (or herpes ads as I prefer to call them), I'll take a dodgy website over a spray-painted streaker anyday.

I couldn't give a *insert expletives here* over someone getting their kit off, but to stuff up my favourite sport for the sake of some pathetic companies only opportunity to pull a scam^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H promote their worthwhile products and services is unforgivable.

If this is viral advertising I want the vaccine...

Q.

effective

[hiroshi912681]

normally, I am the adbusters loving anti-advertisement kinda guy... but I think they did a great job. at least you can tell it's a big joke... I probably would be miffed if I had bought into some elaborate site and later found out it was a marketing scheme...

but, this is probably the funniest advertisement ever... I laughed so hard at this site =P

I like the authentic touches here and there (kinda surprised about the modchip)... even though the first entry on beta-7 shouldn't be about pre-beta-7 times =P I'm sure you could make a list of the mistakes

oh well, I'll probably be hating this site later after I've reached my senses. once this kind of marketing is widespread, I will loathe it, I know it.

Re:I don't care

[qqtortqq]

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160
PMB353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Who bothers to use the equivalent of a P.O. box for domain registration for a simple blog? No one. Its a fake.

Domain Name: BETA-7.COM
Created on: 18-Jun-03

From the site: "March 22, 2003. The day I died and Beta-7 was born... "

Beta-7 seems to have been born less than a month ago in reality.
Nuff said.

Maybe there was an NDA in effect?

[MImeKillEr]

suspiciously not posted until after the official announcement by Sega

Hmm. Don't most companies require their beta testers to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)? Ever think that maybe the site didn't come up until after the announcement because of one?

Before clicking the video link, I was thinking I would end up seeing some guy flopping on the ground due to the flicker rate of the video game (anyone know the technical name?) like when the Simpsons went to Japan, saw some bizarre video on TV & went into a goup kiniption fit. Instead, we see what has to be an obvious fake. That, or the guy got ahold of some bad pot prior to tackling his TV tray.

Alas, I can't see the rest of the site now as its throwing up DNS errors from my end.