The North Face Replaces Wikipedia Photos to Advertise Products

[drd1135]

The North Face flooded Wikipedia with product images to manipulate Google ranking

The North Face has faced backlashed after it exploited the crowdsourced nature of Wikipedia to replace photos of various locations with its own images to promote its brand.

www.dpreview.com

I understand what they did (unethical but clever) but not why they exposed it themselves. Any advertising is good advertising?

 

[Kevin]

The North Face flooded Wikipedia with product images to manipulate Google ranking

The North Face has faced backlashed after it exploited the crowdsourced nature of Wikipedia to replace photos of various locations with its own images to promote its brand.

www.dpreview.com

I understand what they did (unethical but clever) but not why they exposed it themselves. Any advertising is good advertising?

I think the admittance on their part was a huge blunder with somebody in the marketing department thinking it'd be a good idea to show have savvy North Face is in an online world. Sort of like "Oh my goodness, I can't believe that worked! Let's show that we were the first to do it!" while not even thinking about the fallout. They made it worse by saying they worked with Wikipedia on the effort only to have Wikipedia not only deny it but rebuke what North Face did. If it's true that they didn't work with Wikipedia beforehand then they should've just left well enough alone.

It could have actually been a 'feel good story' for them if they had openly worked with Wikipedia before-hand and offered to donate as open source their high quality images of locations that otherwise might not have had any good shots. That some of those images may or may not have had the North Face logo in them somewhere inconspicuous would've been a bonus for them.

 

[drd1135]

It’s very strange. I could see someone being fired over this.

 

[Luke]

the boastful brag was clearly intended to get people talking about their brand....and it succeeded. Surely no one will boycott North Face because of this. If you want to buy expensive, cold weather gear and you like their brand, you'll likely just think that it was clever marketing. And if you don't buy their stuff, this likely wouldn't have turned you into a customer anyways.

 

[Kevin]

the boastful brag was clearly intended to get people talking about their brand....and it succeeded. Surely no one will boycott North Face because of this. If you want to buy expensive, cold weather gear and you like their brand, you'll likely just think that it was clever marketing. And if you don't buy their stuff, this likely wouldn't have turned you into a customer anyways.

I doubt anybody would propose an actual boycott, and I haven't seen any talk about that (yet?), but at the same time I suspect that there is some crossover in demographics between those who would be buying North Face products and those who are staunch supporters of the open internet ideas of Wikipedia. That crossover crowd, at least in the short term while it's still fresh in their memory, will at least pause a little bit in their buying. Give it 6 months though and they'll move on to somebody else to mad at.

 

[Luke]

For sure....if there's one thing that our instant-everything on-demand society has honed, it's short attention span bursts of hate.

Some days, I feel like my own demise can't come quickly enough.

 

[drd1135]

It’s easy to focus on the bad stuff. Lots of good things and people out there. Just not on DPR forums.