Anti-Product Placement For Negative Branding

An anonymous reader writes "Product placement to promote your brand just isn't enough any more. These days, apparently, some companies are resorting to anti-product placement in order to get competitors' products in the hands of 'anti-stars.' The key example being Snooki from Jersey Shore, who supposedly is being sent handbags by companies... but the bags being sent are of competitors' handbags as a way to avoid Snooki carrying their own handbag, and thus potentially damaging their brand."

Comments

What?

[Dyinobal]

What the hell is a snooki, and why are we talking about it on slashdot?

I call bullshit

[Locke2005]

First rule of PR: There is no such thing as bad publicity. No PR hack worth his MBA would deliberately generate publicity for a competitor's product.

Re:Unlikely to work

[demonlapin]

Burberry and its near-implosion due to adoption by chav culture is the poster child for this effect.

Re:clever

[causality]

Huh? Is there some special cachet around a 5 digit UID?

Some people think it's a valid substitute for actually evaluating the quality of your post. So they might believe you not because your words ring true, but because they think you have some kind of seniority and they're far too easily impressed by that. I don't understand it any better than that but I have seen it happen myself.

It's distantly related to giving undeserved credibility to statements made by a government official in complete ignorance of the fact that when there is power at stake, people have more reasons to lie, not fewer, so their burden of proof should be higher, not lower.