Follow the links
1. Ads (3, first clue) on Coolfer for a stolen Audi A3.
2. Clicking through to the website you see a similar notice, while they slowly introduce features about the car.
3. Following the similar notice on the Audi site, you get a pop-up microsite (notice how they don't want to take you away from the features of the car.
4. Microsite reveals more pictures (no license plate of course) and provides nonsense like apparent video of the security footage of the car being stolen. Bottom of the page reveals further website and the tease "Please note: this is an ongoing INTERNAL investigation by Audi of America."
5. The Stolen A3 website takes the shape of some guy named Todd's blog, although for someone looking to recover a stolen vehicle you'd think they'd have enabled comments. His posts lead to a different site.
6. Doing a domain name lookup on both those sites would reveal they are curiously both registered to GMD Studios of Winter Park, FL.
7. GMD Studios is an online content producer/PR firm.
As many people no doubt have figured out that the whole thing is a giant viral marketing campaign. Unfortunately once these types of deceptive ads are found out they tend to do more harm than good for the companies they attempt to hype up.
Ultimately the real tipoff should be that the Audi A3 is such a horrifically ugly car that a) the only way people will ever look at it is through lame campaigns such as this one, and b) if anyone had the misfortune of purchasing a monstrosity of a vehicle like the A3 surely they would rather collect the insurance money than have a picture of it and the poor purchase it implies being advertised all over the place. Sad.
2. Clicking through to the website you see a similar notice, while they slowly introduce features about the car.
3. Following the similar notice on the Audi site, you get a pop-up microsite (notice how they don't want to take you away from the features of the car.
4. Microsite reveals more pictures (no license plate of course) and provides nonsense like apparent video of the security footage of the car being stolen. Bottom of the page reveals further website and the tease "Please note: this is an ongoing INTERNAL investigation by Audi of America."
5. The Stolen A3 website takes the shape of some guy named Todd's blog, although for someone looking to recover a stolen vehicle you'd think they'd have enabled comments. His posts lead to a different site.
6. Doing a domain name lookup on both those sites would reveal they are curiously both registered to GMD Studios of Winter Park, FL.
7. GMD Studios is an online content producer/PR firm.
As many people no doubt have figured out that the whole thing is a giant viral marketing campaign. Unfortunately once these types of deceptive ads are found out they tend to do more harm than good for the companies they attempt to hype up.
Ultimately the real tipoff should be that the Audi A3 is such a horrifically ugly car that a) the only way people will ever look at it is through lame campaigns such as this one, and b) if anyone had the misfortune of purchasing a monstrosity of a vehicle like the A3 surely they would rather collect the insurance money than have a picture of it and the poor purchase it implies being advertised all over the place. Sad.
posted by David at 12:23 a.m.
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