What Amber didn’t know was that she was the target of a prank viral advertising campaign. Perhaps this is where marketing crosses that fine line between targeted and invasive. Traditional targeted campaigns could leverage consumer insights and psychographic data to speak one-to-one with a consumer. Today, agencies and large consumer brands are struggling to gain the attention of people who simply avoid advertisements. In fact Toyota’s own research proved that males under 35 do not respond to advertising and are contemptuous of brands that try to mask the ordinary with a youthful edge.

As the campaign went on, Amber was subjected to further emails from her virtual stalker with links to his MySpace page that described him as a 25-year-old soccer hooligan from England who enjoyed drinking to excess. After several weeks Amber received her final email that informed her it was all in jest and she was simply a target (victim) of a virtual punking campaign by Toyota.

If you thought Toyota had problems with their brakes a few years ago, they now have bigger issues as the campaign came crashing down when this week a California court approved her $10-million (U.S.) legal proceedings against Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi L.A., for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, false advertising and other acts.

The internet is a great mass medium, but it shouldn’t be used to misrepresent brands or invade unsuspecting consumers with misleading messages. Let this be a lesson for clients and agencies looking to experiment with online marketing, think it through before starting the online engine.

Laliberte starts the event by claiming, “I am an artist not a scientist and that is the only way I can make a significant contribution to the mission and to raise awareness to water issues”. He then hooks our interest with a sobering statistic. A child dies every 8 seconds because of contaminated water. With the event now underway, we are welcomed into each of 14 cities (Montreal, Moscow, Santa Monica, New York City, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Marrakesh, Sydney, Tokyo, Tampa, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and London). Each city takes a unique approach to present the message artistically. One dances, one sings, Montreal showcases all that is Cirque and Mumbai takes a perfectly white set and lets adorable children hand-paint themselves blue. Some of the guests included former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Dr. David Suzuki, Peter Gabriel, Shakira, Mathew McConaughey and even U2.

The traditional definition of event marketing or experiential marketing is the face-to-face interaction between a brand and its audience via live events. The rationale is that when an attendee recalls the event experience they will make a positive association with the brand. This positive association will make them more inclined to take action, to make a purchase or to change behaviour. Did Guy Laliberte go to this expense and safety risk to selfishly promote his Cirque brand? Cirque is certainly quite visible during the event; including a spectacular acrobatic scene involving a wall of water and excerpts from the amazing Vegas performance of “O”. Or were his intentions genuinely to promote awareness of all things water? Watch it yourself on www.onedrop.org and make your own determination. I know that after my event experience, I’m committed to doing my part to make a difference. Thank you, Guy Laliberte for pushing the traditional boundaries of events. Who else would have ever thought of an event that included a clown in space?

I’ll spare you the usual marketing-babble; and just say this: these spots are wretched.  Rather than prompt a laugh, which I can only assume was the intent, each version elicits a feeling of acute embarrassment and awkwardness that surely no company would want to be associated with. Even the hockey/commodity beer/Megan Fox loving set, who are used to being bombarded with insipid ads, must be furrowing their collective, and purported low, brow at this lazy attempt.  Kudos to the bods at Mr.Sub for pulling one spot, whatever their reasons. Let’s hope we really can count on them to drop the whole lot and spare us any further embarrassment.

That’s why I get out of bed every morning, well one of the reasons. What a great time to be in marketing. Just when the big brand players recognized consumers were wagging their tails at those mass linear ad campaigns and demanding more choice, more features and more value – along comes the internet. Yes, I used the word “internet”, it really is an ugly word – hey, just in time for the remake of Tron! But as a creative marketer, I’m all for choice, and now we have choice; choice in how we connect with those media savvy ravaging chawa-was we call consumers (I’m secretly a consumer too, but don’t tell anyone). I love the idea of being able to launch a product or service online through social media. Why shouldn’t they have a say, after all they’ll determine if the brand stays or goes to the dogs. Now I can interact in a two-way dialogue with consumers, post a social media campaign, collect creative expressions of the brand, target the very consumer I want to engage and create massive offline and online buzz. I say, let the internet run free, let the consumers become the dog and let us creative brand marketing pros watch the world spin from the comfort of our beds, after all isn’t that what my BlackBerry’s for?