ARGNet recently captured the story of a lawsuit against Toyota regarding an “ARG” that pranks people including snail mail, phone calls, and emails. Now Toyota is on the chain for a whopping $10 million in damages to the poor victim of their marketing. Threatening phone calls, being told that you’re on the hook to pay someone else’s hotel damages…this is NOT marketing. This is borderline harassment IF you haven’t opted in. And that’s the big issue here. ARGs work because players voluntarily follow the breadcrumbs out of their own interest in unraveling a mystery. An ARG inflicted on someone is something totally different. One can only hope that this extremely poor use of an interesting marketing and collaborative storytelling technique won’t dissuade others from creatively applying the approach.
Thus, I pronounce this particular fiasco of a campaign not an ubernoggin work but rather a good example of a peabrain idea.
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