Tactics or a true lie ?

Online advertising is often appraised of its sky limit creativity. Breaking from constraints of traditional media, online advertising give marketers a boundless horizon to ride as free as we can.

Nevertheless how we can draw an ethical line draw to distinguish between creativity and responsibility ?


An advertising agency name as Droga produced a short video and up-hosted on YOUTUBE. The video featured a guy who was riding a bike along the journey similar as he was playing a musical game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlMYWuGUZlM

The video was intended to promote a video game product known as “Guitar Hero” for ActiVision. But the video which was not like a conventional TV commercial, it never “promote” the core product literately. The promotion somehow was so successful that it attracted hundred thousand clicks to watch the video.

What is the problem ?

The major concern was Droga had broken the Integrity of the 5Is principle of CRM (Peppers and Rogers) . They deliberately packaged a commercial material to broadcast online but presented it nothing similar to an advertisement. This was a betrayal to trust and irresponsible to the audiences.

However there were also supportive opinions that Droga was using a legitimate tactics to broadcast an user generated content on an internet platform. Unlike newspapers or magazines which required advertisers to identify clearly an advertisement to readers, YouTube never claim responsibility to the content up-hosted to be true or truthful.

Besides, the video did not provide exaggerated or untruthful content description about the product “Guitar Hero”. This was entirely a marketing creativity to create emotional affiliation of audience to Guitar Hero.

In conclusion, if we default web content should be the reality it represents, we definitely would feel disappointed. There is nothing claim to be unbiased, truthful, nor should the content providers feel obliged. The internet as a content platform always has no hard lines between reportage and fantasy. Everything in VR we should always digest with doubts.

References:
Strategy, Implementation and Practice, 3rd edition, Financial Times & Prentice Hall, 2006. Chaffey, Dave, Richard Mayer, Kevin Johnston, and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick

Posted by Jonathan Lau

Student No: 08834652S