Media Guardian: Some bad news for Hoxton's finest

An entertaining article by Paul Carr, editor of The Friday Thing, discussing viral/subviral marketing, and in particular Puma's humourless reaction to the recent "kneeling girl lavishes oral affections on standing boyfriend while wearing Puma trainers" spoofs. The Nokia cat swinging clip was also given an honoury mention.

The embarrassing truth is that Puma, Nokia, MasterCard and countless others among the world's biggest brands still haven't got a clue about how to use the web as a word-of-mouth marketing tool. News and information sites have long understood the advantages of working closely with their audience to build loyalty, and it's about time Nokia et al realised that, when they uncover a brilliant piece of fanvertising, they should be reaching for their chequebooks, not their lawyers. It would only take the tiniest bit of encouragement - perhaps the promise of some free footwear or a camera-phone for the most creative ideas - to recruit a vast army of unofficial brand promoters spreading the word in ways that a company simply couldn't do (or get away with doing) on their own.

Whilst I get where he is coming from, I wish him luck trying to sell the client on that model As much to the point the Nokia and Puma ads were probably done by retained agencies, potentially invalidating the whole pretence of his rant.

Update: The Nokia ad was produced by an ad agency. It appears that one of Nokia's retained ad agencies approached Nokia with an ad developed by a 3rd party. When Nokia rejected the ad, the 3rd party chose to release it anyway