where you learn how not to have sucky marketing by looking at the sucky marketing of others

7.23.2006

St. Louis BLUES Hockey Team Uses Paid Guerilla Marketing

Have you heard the phrase "you know just enough to be dangerous?" I think this story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a good example. Earlier in the year the advertising firm Schupp created a buzz by having the Cardinals stolen from billboards to get publicity for the baseball team. I mentioned this on my Marketing that Rocks Blog earlier in the year, with the caveat that I may need to change it to the Marketing that Sucks blog if they tick people off. Well, that day is here. It seems like the mainstream media are a little gruff over these episodes. I think the headline is a clue: "Web site for Blues fans is ad firm's latest hoax." Fool me once I guess. The Post does not sound amused by this latest campaign. They report: "I'm just one Blues fan and the idea of The Blue Revolution is to include all fans," declares a blogger on www.thebluerevolution.com. But the site and its blogger are nothing more than a marketing tool for the hockey team, a fact hidden on the Web site and in Schupp's campaign so far." The reason blogs are so popular is because they are created by real people. It is an alternative to the mainstream media AND advertising. There have been some others who have tried this in the past and been persecuted off the net (see Scoble's book Naked Conversations for examples). I have mixed feelings because I admire Schupp for trying something bold and different, but it is at the expense of unsuspecting viewers. Perhaps the blogosphere will be kind to Schupp for their efforts, but if it is then the blogosphere will lose its credibility, and power.

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