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Zipatoni is an American marketing company that provides clients "zany" and "off-beat" marketing services, mainly through buzz marketing or viral marketing. Founded in 1985 by Jack Thorwegan, Zipatoni was acquired by the Interpublic Group of Companies in 2002.
Zipatoni currently has 160 employees. Its headquarters is in Saint Louis, with offices in Chicago and San Francisco and satellite offices in Philadelphia and New York City. It represents numerous brands, including Jim Beam bourbon, AOL and Levi Strauss & Co.'s Levi's brand.
Viral marketing controversy
In late 2006, Zipatoni produced an online viral campaign known as "All I want for Christmas is a PSP", for Sony Computer Entertainment America, the makers of the Playstation platforms, that combined supposedly amateur videos with a blog supposedly written by a friend of the characters in the videos, written in mock leet-speak, stating:
- "we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp! consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss - whoever - so they know what you really want."[1]
When both the videos and the blog were discovered to have been created by the company as part of an advertising campaign, there was widespread criticism of the campaign on the Internet. The campaign was poorly received by the gaming community, and criticized in the press as being counter-productive. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
References
- ^ Mitchell Bingemann. "Fake PSP blog backfires for Sony". PC World.
- ^ Kris Graft. "Sony Screws Up". Business Week.
- ^ Shankar Gupta. "Sony Confesses To Creating 'Flog,' Shutters Comments". MediaPost Publications.
- ^ Shankar Gupta. "Sony Campaign Creates Anti-Evangelists". MediaPost Publications.
- ^ Noelle Weaver. "What We Should Learn From Sony's Fake Blog Fiasco". Advertising Age.
- ^ Nick Farrell. "Sony fakes PSP fan site". The Inquirer.
- ^ Aleks Krotoski. "New Sony viral marketing ploy angers consumers". The Guardian.
External links
- ZIPATONI.com [1]
- A mirror of the now removed blog [2]
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