Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, a journalist/programmer living in Portland, Oregon. I'm the CTO of Kickstarter, created Upcoming.org, and some other stuff too.

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Anchorman's Friendster Marketing

Posted Jul 9, 2004

It looks like Dreamworks is using Friendster to promote the release of Anchorman, with user profiles for each of the characters. In addition to Will Ferrell's Ron Burgundy, there are photos and descriptions for Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and Champ Kind (David Koechner).

It looks like someone's logging in every day to approve every new friend request and testimonial. (So far, Ron Burgundy has 273 friends from word-of-mouth alone.)

Is this sort of promotional tie-in a first for social networking applications? Does anyone know if Friendster approved (or was paid for) the creation of the fakester accounts, which they officially forbid? (Thanks to James for the original tip.)

Update: Some users are seeing giant Anchorman banner ads, proving that it's an official Friendster tie-in.

12 Comments (Add Yours)

Jul 9, 2004
9:55 AM

witz wrote:

The Friendster accounts are supported by advertising banners, so I am positive it's paid for. Though Brian Fantana never approved me, bastard!

Jul 9, 2004
10:17 AM

Andy Baio wrote:

All Friendster profile pages have ad banners, it's not exclusive to these accounts.

Jul 9, 2004
1:05 PM

mat wrote:

Witz beat me to it, but I was going to note that based on the big ass Anchorman bannner ads...

Jul 9, 2004
1:09 PM

witz wrote:

I meant that they have banners POINTING to these profiles...it's definitely a pay deal.

Jul 9, 2004
2:08 PM

Andy Baio wrote:

Thanks for the screenshot, Mat! It's strange, I'm not able to see those banner ads at all.

Jul 10, 2004
8:43 AM

Nelson wrote:

For the past month I've been seeing ads for the Anchorman all over the net in odd places. It's clear someone in marketing is trying something a bit different. It almost worked on me - ordinarily I'd totally ignore a movie like this, but this time I got as far as reading the reviews :-)

Jul 12, 2004
2:52 AM

Chris wrote:

A Wired article on this just went up. It cites this blog post:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64156,00.html

Jul 12, 2004
10:47 AM

Dalton wrote:

I recall Belle and Sebastian doing something like this in October for the release of their new album. "Dear Catastrophe Waitress". I don't know if it was official and OK'd by the Friendster people, Catastrophe is still up there, and she's got thousands of friends.

Jul 13, 2004
9:09 AM

astralgirl01 wrote:

The Anchorman characters are on MySpace.com as well...

Jul 15, 2004
11:09 AM

witz wrote:

http://tribalfusion.speedera.net/m.tribalfusion.com/media/181496/728_Brick.gif

Jul 26, 2004
2:51 PM

Anonymous wrote:

Giant anchor man banner ads alone doesn't prove anything.

Aug 26, 2004
5:39 PM

name wrote:

yup catastrophe has 1900 friends

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Anchorman's Friendster Marketing

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