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FTC To Investigate 'Viral Marketing' Practices
mcflaherty writes "The Federal Trade Commission has stated that it is going to investigate the use of 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerrilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model."
However, if the cooperation is trying to screw us, and someone finds out (as will eventually happen anyway), the viral marketing works just as viral against the cooperation that started it. Therefore, viral marketing is playing with fire!
All in all this must be the most fair form of advertizing, we the users can directly respons to it and decide if we like it or not.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
If I followed you around all day long whispering that you'd be sexy if you had that car, but you don't, so you're not, and that you'd be rich if you went with that accounting firm, but you don't, so you're not...
If I followed you around telling you that you suck because you don't own this stuff, that you suck because you don't look like this...
If I did it for days and months and years...
Would it have an effect on you?
Advertisers use invasive propaganda tactics to try to make you unhappy with your life for no good reason at all, and present themselves as the only ones who can make it better, but they never make it better even if you buy their product.
Advertising is an assault. And it uses scientific methodology to become ever more effective at making you and everyone else do stupid wasteful things for irrational reasons.
The answer is really simple.
Advertising is evil, and shouldn't be permitted.
It doesn't generate any raw materials, it doesn't generate any finished products, it doesn't generate any new ideas for how to do things, it doesn't have any redeeming merit whatsoever.
In making the public aware of what is available to them, it doesn't serve any higher societal good than a global registrar of products and distributers aka the yellow pages would accomplish, and it does a good deal more harm.
Just say no to advertising and advertised goods and services.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
If we all stop trusting each other, and keep it in the back of our minds that everyone we talk to might be trying to decieve and manipulate us for some third parties benefit, then we'll be ok.
Seriously, this sort of thing should be punished by summary execution. It's a huge assault on the very fabric of our society, trying to create a world where we're afraid to participate with our neighbour with trust.
It's not the little thing you're trying to make it out to be. People that perpetuate this sort of thign should be shot in the head and buried in a shallow unmarked grave.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Hell, I don't even know what my point is in posting... I guess I just wish that more people would question these things and take a stand against them, because that is the only way they'll go away. But most people just don't seem to care.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Vodafone in Australia have been doing this for at least a year maybe more. They've had an employee using the alias "Kelly20" on certain messageboards who just slags off the competition constantly.
Eventually they've been outed and banned but in the mean time it does cause quite a bit of chaos and people start touting information thats misleading and taken out of context as fact.