5 ms·

The AdAge video is completely infuriating — it has this completely triumphalist tone celebrating the "cleverness" of the marketing campaign. As if it were a "ha

by glup 7y ago

The AdAge video is completely infuriating — it has this completely triumphalist tone celebrating the "cleverness" of the marketing campaign. As if it were a "hack" rather than an unethical and distasteful idea unbefitting an ad agency. North Face would do well to part with Leo Burnett Tailor Made.

mindgam3 7y ago
"paying absolutely while collaborating with wikipedia" Collaborating my ass. Not to give these guys a pass, at all — this is some seriously skeezy marketing — but I think this underscores a deeper issue of paid accounts on Wikipedia, which is totally a thing as I found out recently. Apparently there people, or maybe a whole ecosystem, who are essentially lobbyists who get paid to edit Wikipedia pages, and that's okay, as long as they mark that they're a paid account, or something. I guess if you follow Wikipedia's rules for paid accounts, it's okay to update pages in favor of your brand?
- proxygeek 7y ago
  Didn't even know paid accounts are a thing at Wikipedia! Wow...
  - geezerjay 7y ago
    Wikipedia is routinely manipulated to promote corporations and individuals. It's no surprise that some of the people engaged in this sort of practice are paid to work exclusively. In fact, I peronally know a case where congress promoters had among their marketing strategy creating and maintaining wikipedia pages that helped them promote their event.
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    The name is rather unfortunate, even misleading - there is not a paid account in the sense "you pay Wikipedia to get perks"; rather "a third-party company pays you to edit Wikipedia in their favour".
- pergadad 7y ago
  This seems to me a "least bad option" case. The alternative is that they'll do it without showing their colours, so you won't even know that it's a possibly biased edit. Corporations are also frequently under attack on Wikipedia, so that they want to do some kind of reputation management is quite understandable. Better they do that openly and have to be clear in their intentions, than that it's hidden.
chipperyman573 7y ago
Their target customers are businesses that want an innovative company to boost their public perception. They don't care what consumers think about them. So, to AdAge, it is a triumphant moment as it showcases their ability to do so without hurting the perception of AdAge to large companies.
- johannes1234321 7y ago
  Which means that their customers (North Face) have to be made ethically responsible - so that other potential customers look for more ethical companies (while advertisment is unethical almost by definition as they try to manipulate behavior and online even worse, as they spy on you ...)
logicallee 7y ago
I might get heavily downvoted for this one but so be it: I was curious why this article we're discussing doesn't show the after pictures, since it's about defacing. (The picture at the top is the one that was replaced - so we only see the before pic.) From the video, it seems because the after pictures are beautiful and way better, which I'd guess is why the real volunteer Wikipedia editors kept them rather than reverting them and why it was so successful. They do show a tiny logo incidentally as part of travel gear that is in the photo but other than this it seems the photos are way better. It's not like the logo takes up more than a few pixels. Any counterexamples? (A photo that was worse than the one it replaced)? If not I think I can't agree with the word "deface". Maybe if the brand placement were more conspicuous or damaging to the photo -- but the ones I saw honestly seemed fine to me and seemed like an improvement. "we improved wikipedia with fantastic royalty-free images of popular destinations, taken with travelers who were also wearing our gear" seems like an alternative way to phrase what happened. then we wouldn't be talking about it. I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone can show a before/after example that wasn't an improvement. Any examples?
- chungy 7y ago
  Wikipedia and Wikimedia have a heavy preference for landscape photos without people in them. Not that they're totally against it, but it still runs against the norm. The photos were uploaded as CC BY-SA, which I think is probably a silver lining, even though the deletion nominations often talk about blurring or removing the trademarked logo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_Wikipedia_advertising_campaign https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_W...
  - logicallee 7y ago
    if there's a heavy preference for not having people, why were the replacements kept by the original editors? (why did they stick). Does Wikipedia have a policy on logos in photos in general? There is a ton of stuff companies could do that include their brand in an incidental way. Here is the article on kidney stones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease imagine a medical supply company took an objectively much better photo but had its logo in tiny letters somewhere on the tape measure or a beaker or something. seems to me a fair trade, it's pretty hard to take stunning photos and there are lots of subjects that don't have it. as long as it's just a few pixels and passes a normal human filter (it's better than what it replaced) I am just not seeing the huge harm. if the after picture was worse, it should get shown in this outrage article.

by glup 7y ago

mindgam3 7y ago

"paying absolutely while collaborating with wikipedia" Collaborating my ass. Not to give these guys a pass, at all — this is some seriously skeezy marketing — but I think this underscores a deeper issue of paid accounts on Wikipedia, which is totally a thing as I found out recently. Apparently there people, or maybe a whole ecosystem, who are essentially lobbyists who get paid to edit Wikipedia pages, and that's okay, as long as they mark that they're a paid account, or something. I guess if you follow Wikipedia's rules for paid accounts, it's okay to update pages in favor of your brand?

proxygeek 7y ago
Didn't even know paid accounts are a thing at Wikipedia! Wow...
- geezerjay 7y ago
  Wikipedia is routinely manipulated to promote corporations and individuals. It's no surprise that some of the people engaged in this sort of practice are paid to work exclusively. In fact, I peronally know a case where congress promoters had among their marketing strategy creating and maintaining wikipedia pages that helped them promote their event.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  The name is rather unfortunate, even misleading - there is not a paid account in the sense "you pay Wikipedia to get perks"; rather "a third-party company pays you to edit Wikipedia in their favour".
pergadad 7y ago
This seems to me a "least bad option" case. The alternative is that they'll do it without showing their colours, so you won't even know that it's a possibly biased edit. Corporations are also frequently under attack on Wikipedia, so that they want to do some kind of reputation management is quite understandable. Better they do that openly and have to be clear in their intentions, than that it's hidden.

chipperyman573 7y ago

Their target customers are businesses that want an innovative company to boost their public perception. They don't care what consumers think about them. So, to AdAge, it is a triumphant moment as it showcases their ability to do so without hurting the perception of AdAge to large companies.

johannes1234321 7y ago
Which means that their customers (North Face) have to be made ethically responsible - so that other potential customers look for more ethical companies (while advertisment is unethical almost by definition as they try to manipulate behavior and online even worse, as they spy on you ...)

logicallee 7y ago

I might get heavily downvoted for this one but so be it: I was curious why this article we're discussing doesn't show the after pictures, since it's about defacing. (The picture at the top is the one that was replaced - so we only see the before pic.) From the video, it seems because the after pictures are beautiful and way better, which I'd guess is why the real volunteer Wikipedia editors kept them rather than reverting them and why it was so successful. They do show a tiny logo incidentally as part of travel gear that is in the photo but other than this it seems the photos are way better. It's not like the logo takes up more than a few pixels. Any counterexamples? (A photo that was worse than the one it replaced)? If not I think I can't agree with the word "deface". Maybe if the brand placement were more conspicuous or damaging to the photo -- but the ones I saw honestly seemed fine to me and seemed like an improvement. "we improved wikipedia with fantastic royalty-free images of popular destinations, taken with travelers who were also wearing our gear" seems like an alternative way to phrase what happened. then we wouldn't be talking about it. I'm happy to be proven wrong if someone can show a before/after example that wasn't an improvement. Any examples?

chungy 7y ago
Wikipedia and Wikimedia have a heavy preference for landscape photos without people in them. Not that they're totally against it, but it still runs against the norm. The photos were uploaded as CC BY-SA, which I think is probably a silver lining, even though the deletion nominations often talk about blurring or removing the trademarked logo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_Wikipedia_advertising_campaign https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_North_Face_W...
- logicallee 7y ago
  if there's a heavy preference for not having people, why were the replacements kept by the original editors? (why did they stick). Does Wikipedia have a policy on logos in photos in general? There is a ton of stuff companies could do that include their brand in an incidental way. Here is the article on kidney stones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone_disease imagine a medical supply company took an objectively much better photo but had its logo in tiny letters somewhere on the tape measure or a beaker or something. seems to me a fair trade, it's pretty hard to take stunning photos and there are lots of subjects that don't have it. as long as it's just a few pixels and passes a normal human filter (it's better than what it replaced) I am just not seeing the huge harm. if the after picture was worse, it should get shown in this outrage article.