Microsoft gets hip with da yoof to flog email
Doing it for charidee
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What could be more insincere than a bunch of marketing types concocting a fake blog to pimp their company's services by hitching them to worthy causes?
This could - getting a bunch of marketing people who specialize in nothing but pimping other people's products and services to do it for you. And then targeting kids and teens.
Microsoft has hired McCann Worldgroup to create a campaign driving uptake of its IM and email by affiliating with ten charitable organizations. Driving the campaign is the demographically-profiled and completely fake Parker Whittle, created by McCann. Hey, this speaks to the kids, right? Pot-smoking expression, geek glasses, blogging with the internets. That's what I hear my daughters' friends talking about all the time...
The idea is to get people IMing and emailing to raise money for the causes during a 30-day "i'm talkathon". Worthy stuff.
Except... for the charities to get donations you must be using Hotmail (Windows Live Hotmail) and IM (Windows Live Messenger). So step right up and open one, two or three accounts - more, even, because you can associate different charities with different accounts.
According to the talkathon literature: "Donations from the i'm Initiative are based on advertising revenue raised from Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail usage." Also: "The more you send messages, the more Microsoft will donate." And the more users of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail it gets.
Among other creakingly scripted "conversations" on his "blog" "Parker Whittle" "writes": "I saw an ad that said, 'The more you talk, the more we give.' So I thought, if I get a bunch of people talking for 30 days, how much will they give?"
Microsoft and McCann are all business again at the bottom of the page with a disclaimer, just in case anyone had been taken in by this cleverly crafted fakery and decided to sue. Take note: "The Parker Whittle character depicted herein is fictitious and his activities are described for illustrative purposes only." The spirit of Dan Lyons lives. ®
COMMENTS
Ah yes but wait for it
You can talk to all your "friends" no matter what messenger client they use now.. As Windows "Live" Messenger allows you to link up with people on Yahoo! messenger and AoL's Instant Messenger...
Same as Yahoo!'s one does..
Maybe the reason someone's messenger is quiet is because your "friends" have moved on and changed e-mail accounts or they can't get through the corporate firewall at work any more...
Anyway Come On MS you really think we are all that gullible?
It's a case of quick guys the "cool" one's just left what we gonna do we ain't "hip" no mores..
Mines the one with "I do it Old Skool - ICQ" on the back ...
How to hit MS where it hurts.
Everyone create a fake account with a name that makes it absolutely clear that it IS a fake account.
Empli Gratia: "Fake-MarketingShill" or "Fake-ForYetAnotherMSScam", et cetera.
Have that account connect via standard MS IM.
Create another account, also with an obviously fake name, and then connect it through a 3rd party IMC (say Pidgin, or Trillian).
Have one fake account "talk" to the other fake account, just as fast as the automated scripts can send messages back & forth to each other.
How well do you think MS' shampaign will work if all those disgusted with MS do this & rack up a couple TRILLION fake messages?
Go ahead MS, donate to those charities based on the number of accounts/messages sent.
All of them just as real as your shampaign, all of them JUST as useful, all of them just as warped, brain-dead, & ignorant of the real world.
MS, your services at Hotmail are abysmal & are synonymous with spammers World-wide.
Your IMC is filled with spammers who masquerade as friends, flooding our IM in-box with garbage.
There's a REASON Google is kicking your pathetic butt, and that's because THEY actually CARE how their image in the World reflects upon them as a Corporation.
Take your shampaign & cram it RIGHT back up the hole where you pulled it from in the first place.
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