Social Advertising going too far?

Would you give away the private phone number of a friend to play a practical joke on her? American entertainment channel A&E is trying to convince people to do just that, promoting their new series of the Criss Angel MindFreak show. Visitors of the advertising site are asked to leave the first name and phone number of a friend. They will be provided with a link they can send this friend. When the friend opens the link, illusionist Criss Angel will appear in a video, pretending to ‘sense’ the name and phone number of the recipient. After the video is shown, the recipient will be called and Criss Angel will explain in a recorded message that it was all a joke, and urge her to watch his new show beginning in June.

Viral advertising campaigns are becoming more intrusive all the time – even though the idea behind viral marketing is the voluntary participation of the target group. It seems marketers are on the verge of abusing social processes for their own good, and that’s not good practice. When the personal space of people gets invaded by marketing they might be reluctant to share any other form of advertising with their friends in the future.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 1:59 am and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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