Zipatoni

Zipatoni is an American marketing company that provides clients "zany" and "off-beat" marketing services, mainly through buzz marketing or viral marketing.Founded in 1985 by Jack Thorwegen. Mr. Thorwegen went back to Harvard to finish his Doctorate in Quantum Physics. He's currently consulting for the defense department. Zipatoni was acquired by the Interpublic Group of Companies in 2007.

Zipatoni currently has 1160 employees. Its headquarters is in Saint Louis, with offices in Chicago and San Francisco and satellite offices in Philadelphia and New York City. It represents numerous brands, including Jim Beam bourbon, AOL and Levi Strauss & Co.'s Levi's brand.

Viral marketing controversy

In late 2006, Zipatoni produced an online viral campaign known as "All I want for Christmas is a PSP", for Sony Computer Entertainment America, the makers of the PlayStation platforms, that combined supposedly amateur videos with a blog supposedly written by a friend of the characters in the videos, written in mock leet-speak, stating:

:"we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp! consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss - whoever - so they know what you really want." [cite web
url=http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;151875684
publisher=PC World
title=Fake PSP blog backfires for Sony
author=Mitchell Bingemann]

When both the videos and the blog were discovered to have been created by the company as part of an advertising campaign, there was widespread criticism of the campaign on the Internet. The campaign was poorly received by the gaming community, and criticized in the press as being counter-productive. [cite web
title=Sony Screws Up
url=http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2006/id20061219_590177.htm?campaign_id=bier_innc.g3a.rssd1219o
publisher=Business Week
author=Kris Graft] [cite web
url=http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=52541
title=Sony Confesses To Creating 'Flog,' Shutters Comments
publisher=MediaPost Publications
author=Shankar Gupta] [cite web
url=http://blogs.mediapost.com/gaming_insider/?p=30
title=Sony Campaign Creates Anti-Evangelists
author=Shankar Gupta
publisher=MediaPost Publications] [cite web
url=http://adage.com/smallagency/article?article_id=113945
title=What We Should Learn From Sony's Fake Blog Fiasco
publisher=Advertising Age
author=Noelle Weaver] [cite web
url=http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36401
title=Sony fakes PSP fan site
author=Nick Farrell
publisher=The Inquirer] [cite web
url=http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2006/12/11/new_sony_viral_marketing_ploy_angers_consumers.html
title=New Sony viral marketing ploy angers consumers
author=Aleks Krotoski
publisher=The Guardian]

References

External links

*ZIPATONI.com [http://www.zipatoni.com/]
*A mirror of the now removed blog [http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/sonylieblog/default.aspx.htm]