Eating $1 a Day Challenge..

Yeah, that briefly pissed me off, which made me look upon the whole thing, and the OP, in the worst possible light.

I have nothing personal against the OP; he is, presumably, just doing his job.

 

Yep, you were fighting awfully hard for such a "word of mouth" mention, and you pulled one over on me for a few minutes.

But, no, I don't want you to give up now.

This can prove a vital learning tool for your career, a lesson in the art of deflecting negative publicity: will you be able to assuage the duped consumer(s) once they realize they've been played, or will a backlash continue to build up? (So far, obviously, it's only me who's against ya.)

Will my impending UFCU boycott be successful? Will my calls to the media succeed in getting coverage? Will UFCU answer my public challenge to donate money to homeless soup kitchens equaling the amount that you (presumably) took from them?

If you're still in school, then you should just make this your final thesis project.

I call for boycott! Boycott, I say! Let it be known, right this minute I am drinking an antiviral cocktail. Internet war is on!

--------

Kidding aside, a legitimate question: did you start this thread with the intent of it being part of your viral ad contamination?

'Cause it sure seems like that's the way social networking advertising campaigns are designed to work: to cheaply get as many people talking about the advertised product as possible (in this case, your modified hunger strike in the service of UFCU's new account dealie), without them realizing they are being conned.

Or were your intentions truly pure?

 

You're right. I'll give you that, though you (jokingly?) obfuscated later, you stated in your first post that it was part of an ad campaign.

This reminds me of a character in a David Mamet script telling the heroine on page 1, "Hello. Nice to meet you; I am a confidence artist," then proceeding to spend the rest of the running time nevertheless tricking her out of her inheritance. ("Well, you're a bad little pony, and I'm not going to bet on you.")

Or, per the bolded part, a better analogy: a longtime acquaintance wrangling all her friends into a Tupperware pitch, when all of them thought they were just being invited over for a dinner party.

Your attitude about marketing, which sounds reasonable, brings to mind whether a viral advertising campaign can ever truly be considered honest. I'm probably just the type that doesn't like being sold to. (And, clearly, I am not in your target demographic.)

Not directly related to your experiment here, since you were initially up-front about it, but the article below touches upon the potential for backlash with such viral campaigns, a potential for backlash that simply doesn't exist if you just hand out fliers in the campus quad, advertising "Welcome back! $20.09 free for 2009! No-fee checking, only at UFCU!"

NY Times: "Trying to Figure Out How Much Tease Is Too Much" (You're the ad with the Toyota logo disclaimer, apparently):

Spoiler

[rquoter]NY Times: "Trying to Figure Out How Much Tease Is Too Much"
September 19, 2006
ADVERTISING Julie Bosman

THE outing of Lonelygirl15, the online creation whose confessional video diaries captivated hundreds of thousands of YouTube fans, has forced her audience to consider: Was Lonelygirl a simple hoax or high-concept art?

A similar question can be asked of advertising campaigns that employ Lonelygirl-style deception. A typical teaser campaign plants a cryptic message in its ads, or implores consumers to visit a mysterious Web site, or links a string of clues meant to tantalize consumers with the implicit promise of a pending denouement.

Some campaigns, like the Burger King-sponsored Subservient Chicken Web site that became a viral sensation in 2004, consist of a video that appears homemade but is actually the work of an ad agency on behalf of its client.

•The unmasking of Lonelygirl, who turned out to be an actress in a film project, may cast a cloud over teaser campaigns that blur the lines between truth and fiction.

Advertisers who want to generate interest in a product with a mysterious teaser campaign may tread lightly around consumers who feel increasingly duped by fake videos and covert viral marketing efforts, said Andy Sernovitz, the chief executive of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a trade group in Chicago.

“Lonelygirl has changed the game,” Mr. Sernovitz said. “We all know that disclosure is important and honesty is first. The question is, How do you still have creative freedom and how do you do fun mystery-based entertainment and make that compatible with open transparency?” One teaser campaign is currently blanketing New York and Los Angeles with purple-and-white signs plastered on subway cars and hanging from cavernous ceilings in train stations. “The woman in red is flirting with you,” reads one. “The person next to you could be your next boss,” reads another.

The only clue to the signs’ provenance is a Web address, u-r-connected.com. The site introduces the concept of six degrees of separation and six people identified only by their first names. But the sponsor of the campaign, the ABC network, is not identified on the teaser ads or on the Web site. (The ads are promoting a new ABC show, “Six Degrees,” which will have its debut on Thursday.)

The high quality of the ads and the Web site are clear giveaways that the teasers are a well-financed professional ad campaign.

But Michael Benson, the senior vice president for marketing at ABC Entertainment, acknowledged that people who see the ads and the Web site may have no idea that it is a campaign for a television show. Still, ABC hopes people will figure it out “sooner rather than later,” he said.

“It’s about getting people intrigued with something that isn’t just advertising and selling something,” Mr. Benson said. “For a tease to work, it’s got to really get the audience to ask questions.”

Another current teaser campaign has signs urging people to “Seek the guru.” Visitors to seektheguru.com are greeted by a wrinkled man in a red cloak with his hands lifted upward — and information on digital cable and phone packages for Comcast, the company behind the campaign.

(It is worth noting that Comcast was burned by the Web in June when one of its repairmen fell asleep on the couch in the home of a customer, who then videotaped the napping repairman and posted the video online. Within two weeks, 200,000 people had viewed the video.)

Other marketers have created MySpace pages to advertise television shows, as Fox did with its show “Prison Break.” But Fox made it clear that the page was not a homemade effort by displaying the name of Toyota, a sponsor.

•Not everyone is so careful. Last year, McDonald’s created a fake blog that chronicled the discovery of a French fry that apparently resembled Abraham Lincoln, but consumers were not pleased by the revelation that it was a hoax.

“In the unspoken compact between us and advertisers, there is a lot we will take,” said Bob Garfield, the critic for the trade publication Advertising Age and a co-host of the WNYC radio program “On the Media.” “We will be screamed at; we will be offended; we will be irritated. But we won’t be made into chumps. So there is always a risk of backlash when the reveal reveals not only who the advertiser is, but that they’ve been lying to us.”

Despite all of that, advertisers may try to duplicate the success of Lonelygirl in future ad campaigns.

“I think Lonelygirl will egg people on to try to recreate the Lonelygirl phenomenon,” Mr. Garfield said. “What advertiser doesn’t love a phenomenon?”[/rquoter]

Don't get me wrong. I find the entire thing (your starvation gimmick included) to be highly entertaining.

 

While trying to learn a different image program, OP, it occurs to me my issue isn't so much with you, but with the very concept of such marketing practices themselves.

If I have to second-guess whether one person who comments on a message board is being explicitly paid to do so (in an effort to make a buck off me), I end up questioning the validity of everyone's expressed opinions. Is Tinman really a fan of the basketball culture of the last decade, or is "Tinman" actually a viral plant for ESPN Classic's forthcoming "I Love the '90s"-type knockoff? (Or, barring that, a really high-end home theater shop)? Is FattyFatBastard just a genial man-about-town, or is he really working for Dewars and RJ Reynolds, successfully pushing the idea that, in no tme at all, any internet guy can be out on the town groping attractive ladies, if only one follows his lead? Is basso accepting money from the Green Party to post each day; is he actually part of a campaign office's D&D rear-guard action?

Looking at that article, I guess at the time I didn't blame the LonelyGirl actress for doing her job, either:



Though, on some level(s) it still comes across as creepy.

 

Except that Mr. Butts has placed Kosher delis/markets in some of the HEBs near Jewish communities....

 

Who wins the over-analysis award? swoly's scrutiny over the technicalities of a clown car joke or aghast trying to pull a Dateline investigation in this thread?

 

This thread makes me realize how much money I waste on food.

I think I spend about 40 bucks a day eating out.

FML.

 

Me too. Except it's at least for 2 people. FML.

 

That's insane! Where's that thread with the guy who spent $3k a month on food?