In an effort to garner attention for the Matrix brand, Toyota and their ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi L.A. let loose a viral campaign that was intended to target an already ad adverse demographic. In March 2008, an unsuspecting L.A. resident, Amber Duick, received an email from a complete stranger named Sebastian Bowler who seemed to know her. The email read “Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles Gonna lay low at your place for a bit. Till it all blows over. Bringing Trigger.” At first Amber might have assumed this was junk mail and ignored it, however as a single women living in L.A. she may have become increasingly concerned when she received a second email that included her home address with a photo of the alleged Sebastian.
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.