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Buick Uploads Tiger Video to YouTube, Hopes for Viral

Buick is the latest company to upload a pseudo-commercial to YouTube, hoping to fool users into thinking it's anything but.

The 60-second video was uploaded to YouTube last week by Buick, according to AdWeek. The video shows what appear to be outtakes from a Buick commercial featuring Tiger Woods. Despite grainy footage and audio drops, Tiger's "spontaneous" endorsement Buick comes through loud and clear: "Everything about the [audio drop] creates style. I don't know about you, but I've never seen anything like it on the road."

The video shows other scenes with Tiger, then ends with a burly security man looking at the camera and whispering, "Hey, what are you doing?" Almost immediately, auto blogs and users on YouTube began to question the validity of the spot. Buick created the video to draw attention to its new crossover vehicle, the Enclave.

"The goal was to get people talking, not just on YouTube but on the auto blogs," said Dave Darovitz, Buick's communications manager. "We engineered the spot on the PR side and worked with marketing to create this disruptive approach to get the word out about the Enclave and to get Tiger involved."

The video did achieve top 10 most-viewed English video status the morning after it was uploaded. But as Wendys saw with its "Molly Grows Up" video, not all attention from such efforts is positive; Buick's attempt at creating a viral sensation is drawing similar ire from YouTube users, who apparently aren't very receptive to marketers' attempts to deceive them.

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