"Viral" marketing is too much like spam

I've been saddened to see the Wikipedia spammed even more often these days by shady people who wish to push their own agenda, political or advertising wise. It's not a new phenomenon of course, a big place that anyone can edit will be edited by anyone, including marketers, although most of the latter might not want to admit to doing it. Except McKinney & Silver in Durham, North Carolina. They frankly, seem proud of their achievement as if they were the first to think of spamming anything.

In mid-December, McKinney placed a Pherotone entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is written and updated by thousands of anonymous Web users. It was taken down after a month when Wikipedia discovered that it was untrue.

While most might not agree with the tactic of Ashleeturfing, heh, sorry Astroturfing over the web in such dubious ways, SONY openly recruits interns to help them spread the good word in return for college credit. "Do you blog, have lots of friends at your MySpace page, and love music?" well, super, you can help us spam the blogosphere with more gals like Ashley and miss Aguilera. Sony were also behind that guerilla campaign that looked a lot like street art but wasn't, and their symbol even appears on you, as ink stamps at hip clubs. Tres lame-o Sony.

But I digress. I just wanted to kvetch about ad agencies, complete with the usual surname & surname name, now shamelessly spam the Wikipedia to gain notoriety for their clients, and then brag about in newspaper articles. I guess us advertising folks deserve such a crappy rep.