Anonymous Advertising and Ask
Posters have recently appeared in the London Tube advertising a site called Information Revolution. This promises to be part of a campaign against dominant search engines controlling information flows, i.e. it is aimed against Google without naming them.
Only, it isn’t a proper campaign at all but part of an advertising stunt. The comments about this method of using fake outrage delivered anonymously make for entertaining reading.
So is this a pretty lousy example of advertising that doesn’t work? Or is it really fiendishly clever because it has at least got people talking about Ask, like me, here, now?
Posted in General 3 years, 5 months ago at 2:25 pm. 3 comments
Previous Post: Lightfoot Loss Next Post: Happy 50th Birthday EU
As I said on my blog before I knew who the adverts were for, I am planning to boycott the company responsible.
Fortunately, having always found Ask to be completely useless, that shouldn’t be too onerous a commitment.
Except of course that their webserver
IP address: 62.128.140.21
Host name: http://www.information-revolution.org
also goes by the alias of
10 108 108 108 130.117.240.82 netbenefit.demarc.cogentco.com
11 108 110 108 212.53.64.246 sw-ih-cor-03-outside.netbenefit.co.uk
12 109 108 110 212.53.64.251 sw-l3-cor-01-outside.netbenefit.co.uk
13 108 108 107 62.128.140.21 smokefreeengland.co.uk
http://smokefreeengland.co.uk
is the website dedicated to the “no smoking in public places” legislation and snooping regulations due to start on 1st July.
I liked the adverts – I’m not saying that Google is Big or Bad, but I think it is good to question how our information gets to us, whether through traditional media or internet searches.
I was sad/bored enough on the tube journeys to work to spot that the red ellipse on all the tube ads was probably the Ask red ellipse. How sad am I?