Anchorman's Friendster Marketing

Posted by Andy Baio

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.

March 29, 2012: Eight years later, Ron Burgundy joins Twitter to promote Anchorman 2.

Comments

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

    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 🙂

    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.

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