When Sony's Viral Marketing Became a Virus

by Mark Whiting

Well, the ugly little saga of AllIWantForChristmasIsAPSP.com has finally come to a close -- the website in question is now completely offline. No doubt the whole affair will be remembered for some time as a textbook example of how NOT do do marketing in the digital age.

For the few of you who may have missed the original hijinks, the short story is this: Sony -- mistakenly believing it was more savvy than its target audience -- decided to hire marketing firm Zipatoni to produce a fictitious blog on which two completely random 'friends' (actually Zipatoni employees) staged a weird little Punch and Judy show.

Overtly, the blog in question purported to showcase the trials and tribulations of a couple of adult-age gamers as they labored to convince their friend's mom to buy him a PSP for Christmas. The blog itself was written in wince-worthy hipster jargon and at one point sported the crowning jewel of a tremendously embarrassing hip-hop routine which presided in ghoulish majesty over the whole affair like some kind of ghastly Christmas star. Sony has endeavored to suppress the spread of the video, but its existence persists (at least for the moment), thanks to YouTube.

The tide began to turn against Sony's initiative after popular webcomic Penny-Arcade publicly outed the chicanery in a deliberate move to force a little transparency up ins. The Internet was quick to kick the horrid thing to death after that point in a classic example of pile-on. For a brief moment, the blog existed in a state of apology with the following classic phrase resplendent:

"Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony."

You don't say. Currently, the blog sits in a 'coming-soon' whitewash of funky freshness. The finger pointing over who is to ultimately to blame for all the guffaws and negative PR is already in full swing.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is this : big companies must recognize and accept that you cannot fake the funk of a viral campaign through a heavy-handed attempt at subterfuge. The Internet -- and particularly gaming culture -- is as already as suspicious of The Man as it is possible to be. Rather than making them appear hip and edgeworthy, Sony's current 'egg on face' position is a textbook example of how to come off looking like an out-of-touch laughingstock.

Compare and contrast this current public relations train wreck against Burger King's recent tactic of Full Disclosure. Authenticity -- even the over-the-top self-referential kind -- is generally respected on these here Internets. Image-challenged corporations attempting to pull a fast one over their target audience? Not so much.

[original post: www.gametab.com]