How to Deal with Hoax Advertising?

Recentelijk hebben we de zogenaamde hoax of spoof advertenties gezien van Puma en Victoria Secret’s. Hoe hebben beide firma’s daar op gereageerd en wat was het uiteindelijke resultaat?

With the PUMA spoof, the company caught wind of the fake ads and reacted by trying to stop the spread of the spoof across the Internet. Right. That’s like an ant trying to stop a bulldozer. There were threatening emails, denial press releases, and cease and desist letters. What did this accomplish? Not much for PUMA’s cause. All it did was to force the spoof and the conversation about the spoof to race around the Internet even faster. It’s everywhere. It’s now a permanent fixture on thousands of websites.

On the other hand, Victoria’s Secret reacted in a polar opposite. What did they do? Nothing. Nada. No press releases. No cease and desists. The result? It’s a dead issue.

Other Classic Spoofs:

MasterCard – Indecent Proposal

Nokia – Cat Spin (definitely done under the instructions of a retained agency)

Whassup – A whole series of parody videos (the first few of these were done by ad agencies retained by Budweister)