A Barking Dog

Last spring there was a post pointing toward a hilarious clip of a Norweigen band that plays kitchen appliances. It turns out they did recently do a US tour. It turns out it was a scripted viral marketing campaign complete with a ficitonal cheesey agent and also includes a link to what is proported to by the rider. It’s pretty funny.

It’s sort of a blurry line between concert sponsorship and an outright viral marketing campaign. For instance, to me it was obvious that This is Spinal Tap was a parody though when the flick first came out, my roommate at the time remarked that the film was interesting, but he thought they should have used a better known band, like Led Zeppelin. He was completely serious. Apparently Hurra reportedly was or is a real band, though when that clip started making the rounds earlier this year Ford Motor Company’s ad agency JWT developed the whole “tour” and mock documentary. Pollstar has a more complete story.

Ford’s Linda Perry-Lube had this to say “We have not found on blogs or anything that people are bashing us or saying this is a marketing ploy. To this point, I think there is no one who’s saying that. We’re pretty proud that it’s coming across as genuine,” Since you mention it…

It’s that last part that I think tanks the credibility of the campaign. If those guys want to hawk Ford’s good on ‘em it’s not a bad way to make a buck. But for Ford to be proud that people think this is real is starting to push the envelope a bit much for my taste. Though it is said that HT is real, it makes me wonder why that clip started circulating when it did last Spring and the timing of a campaign that kicked off in Oct is certainly suspicious. It makes me wonder if Ford fabricated the entire thing, or were mearly very, very quick to turn something around like this in a few months. Dave, why are you being such a shriveled up, disgruntled, cynical old fart? For the record, I’m not shriveled.

My suspicions… For example, where are the rest of the songs? The .com domain was registered by proxy, in the US by Go Daddy just prior to the buzz created by the video. The server disappears into the Rackspace data center just as the site for the fake blog and “documentary” site. The meta keywords on the Hurra site include Ford and the name of the Ford product it’s pimping. The http://www.frazzelacts.com site is an astrotrufed site built only for the Ford promotion and through a proxy. The hurratorpedo.com name is registered just prior to the buzz starting but as late as May the download was still coming from an obscure Norweigen record label. Then, to time with the promotion, the campaign blog and fake US agent site come online. Prior to the buzz the original Duplex Records site was pretty sparse with Hurra info. It even goes as far to position the Ford ad campaign as the “US Tour”. When the clip first broke, there wasn’t that much about them. It’s as if they were a novelty act from the mid 90s (if even that) and nothing much has happened since. More telling is that one the Darknet, where you can get pretty much anything you desire in terms of unlicensed or pirated software, movies and music, only the original clip is available. I would think that if the band was active in recent years, there would be some recordings, clips, etc.

It would be interesting to figure out who in the first place let the blogosphere know about the original clip. It’s entirely possible that JWT found this chestnut, got the rights to use it then astroturfed the blogosphere and launched a campaign developed around it. There are just too many coincidences and things from out of left field to believe this just sort of happened. It’s funny stuff, but it also represents how corporate interests can use the blogosphere to astroturf and create an illusion of grassroots support when it’s really just another commercial that they want to fool you into watching.