Microsoft’s Idea Wins ad agency dropped discs on the small town of Willow Springs by mini-parachute in the interest of promoting ideawins, a new free accounting software from MicroSoft.
Odd that they dropped DISCS considering it’s WEB BASED. Guess they couldn’t drop computers, though free wi-fi sponsored by ideaWins would have made more sense to me.
The agency also bought the search phrase Willow Springs on Google AdWords (and MSN search… I had to check that ;). They did not buy on Yahoo for “willow springs” as far as I can tell.
Their agency responsible for the concept made these videos to look like local resident videos and submitted them to YouTube (I strongly suspect):
Fakey-looking video made to look like YouTube user generated.
There are lots of frikkin parachutes here.
Fakey-looking press coverage.
I bet the agency will come out and admit their involvement - these are so obviously fake that I can’t imagine they’d do anything else. Otherwise we may get another Edelmen shit storm.
here’s profiles of people who uploaded the video:
willowspringsplaya joined YouTube: 4 days ago
FS6526 joined YouTube: 4 days ago
danilevsky60 joined YouTube: 1 day ago
Apparently the first two got so excited they started YouTube accounts. Then Danilevsky got so stoked about his footage he had to start a YouTube account himself because he didn’t get wide enough coverage at his local TV station.
Thanks residents of Willow Springs ;) Interesting and complex though rather hamhanded campaign, and it certainly looks like an interesting piece of software targeting the small business owner.
via psfk
update:
AdRants covered this yesterday.
Comments in AdRants points to actual local media coverage of the story.
Also I’m beginning to recognize that they didn’t really expect to fool anyone and probably made this a little fakey feeling on purpose.
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