Remember McDonald's phony Lincoln Fry blog? Well, according to MediaPost (third story down) the umbrella Lincoln Fry campaign (TV/online) was successful and the fake blog played a big role in it. What's more, Yahoo had a major hand in it as well.
In a cash-free deal, McDonald's agency, Tribal ddb in Chicago, gave Yahoo! placement in the Super Bowl TV ads in exchange for “creative media exposure to our target audience,” according to Doug Chavez, senior account director. Yahoo! delivered group e-mails tagged with, “The unbelievable blog of the week,” and a link to the Lincoln Fry blog. In addition, more than 500 million impressions were delivered via Yahoo!'s Overture ad network searches for the term “blog.” Therefore, anytime anyone searched for “blog” on Yahoo! search engine (including sites with searches powered by Yahoo!, like cnn.com, msn.com, and Altavista), the first link that appeared was the Lincoln Fry “unbelievable blog of the week.”
Maybe the folks in Yahoo! ad sales need to start talking to folks like Jeremy Zawodny who get it. This isn't kosher guys. You're giving consumers the wrong impression about what a blog should be. Counsel your agency partners. Yes, you could argue this worked. But the PR was bad. Was it worth it?
Technorati Tags: McDonald's, LincolnFry, Yahoo
