Coca Cola spam reaches Norway
Yesterday, when I saw the blanketing of marketing banners for the zero movement, I thought to myself: OK, here it comes, they didn’t learn from the beating they got last time…
Coca Cola came under scrutiny for forum spamming and guerilia marketing when they launched Coke Zero in Australia. Seems they didn’t learn, and have made the same mistake in Norway. The launch started yesterday, but their marketing people got a jump on things by posting links to advertizing vidoes starting a few days before.
Freakforum broke the spamming story in Norway. Note that many of the links they found were related to a spam campaign from April that was a bit less obvious. It had a bottle of coke in a seemingly amateur video of two football celebrities talking. But that same user came back to some of the forums and posted a new link, and this time there was no mistake. It’s an English speaking video, with a girl who slaps her boyfriend silly over that one question: Do I look fat. And at the end there’s a URL for the address they’re using for the Zero Movement in Norway.
What’s interesting, is that Coca Cola has most likely fallen foul of the marketing law in Norway, where one section states that advertizing needs to be clearly labeled as advertizing. This campaign is trying to fly under the radar, and be seen as another user having found something funny. The first campaign from April is in clear violation. The new campaign is in violation if you consider that the post is not labeled as advertizement. It’s just when you get to the end of the video that you understand there’s an advertizing message. But with the two posting campaigns linked with the same user, it doesn’t really matter. Coca Cola is busted as a spammer!
For those who’d be interested in trying to get their hosting yanked, here are the particulars:
IP: 83.136.90.23 (for several domains relating to the campaign).
Webhotel: phd.dk (go to Kontakt os and find an e-mail address there)
Upstream: nianet.dk