Waxy.org is the sandbox of Andy Baio, an
independent journalist and programmer living in
Portland, Oregon. I created In the last few days, Mazda started a new viral marketing campaign in the unfortunate style of "Raging Cow." Take a look at HalloweenM3, a Blogspot weblog supposedly written by a 22-year-old New Yorker named "Kid Halloween." (Update: The blog was taken down, see details below.)
With little effort, it's clear this was designed to promote the new Mazda3 model. The clues are obvious: links to videos featuring the Mazda3 (here and here), the HalloweenM3 username, and rich media hosted at Rackspace, an expensive dedicated hosting provider. Plus, Mazda has tried the viral marketing thing before.
But this is the most half-hearted attempt at viral marketing I've seen, especially in light of recent web efforts like the elaborate I Love Bees and Be More Chill campaigns. Four entries in a Blogspot blog isn't very impressive.
One interesting point is that this entry claims to have recorded the Mazda commercial off the Manhattan Neighborhood Network public access channel, and several seconds of MNN footage are edited into the beginning of this video clip. I wonder how MNN would feel about being exploited for commercial use by Mazda. (I e-mailed them to find out.)
Thanks to Witz.org for the tip.
Update: Autoblog has some thoughts about the campaign.
October 22, 2004: The blog was taken down! Fortunately, Yahoo has a cached copy. And you can still view the user profile and videos.
6:37 PM
bwahaha, MNN hasn't broadcast an image that clear since it's equipment was NEW in the mid-80s.
I love that Mazda's boy reads DFW and Jonathan Franzen, yet gets all Wiggaz about "fine b...ches" in his profile.
This is a car--no, THE car--for aching wannabes.
4:30 PM
i think the guerilla marketing, while unavoidable, is disgustingly annoying. leave it to corporations to appropriate and popularize marginalized culture to make it "hip".
while the blogging community is hardly a marginalized culture, this is just another example in a long line of such acts (re: "peace. love. linux." street tagging campaign).
2:24 AM
is there anywhere else the Mazda viral video can be found?
Paul