They say the fasted way to kill a bad product is with good advertising.
I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Mancrunch stunt finally raised enough hackles in the gay community to motivate a few curious bloggers to do the legwork necessary to find out what was really going on. Kudo’s to Lyndon Evans for writing a blog post that provides a fairly concise summary of the whole affair. A second post debunking the Mancrunch controversy, written by Alex Blaze, provides even more sordid details on the site, its ownership and makes a direct connection between the site and other online dating sites of questionable moral values (i.e. these other sites promote affairs and secret/discreet relationships focusing primarily on sex).
(NOTE: Both links go to sites with gay content and may be considered NSFW in some situations.)
And here’s one other thing of note – it looks like this stunt (and the ensuing controversy) isn’t a first-time experience for Mancrunch’s ownership (represented by Bridge & Tunnel PR’s Dominic Friesen and Elissa Buchter). As pointed out in a piece appearing in Tuesday’s LA Times (by Dan Neil), another site represented by Friesen and Buchter – AshleyMadison.com – ran the same gauntlet last year, generating tons of press and web links in the process.
The tv guys have caught on, as Mr. Neil reports in his column:
Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning, policy and government affairs at CBS, told Reuters: “A whole cottage industry has grown up out of trying to make use of network turndowns. . . . They’ve found a loophole in an otherwise well-intentioned process.”
So what’s the point of this whole exercise?
It’s all about search engine placement and creating as many in-bound links as possible for the lowest possible cost. Because search engine placement means traffic and for web sites that charge desperate people a monthly membership fee – traffic means big bucks. If you were searching the Internet for this kind of site, you would find over 2,000 stories about Mancrunch listed before the first link to a competing site.
Mission accomplished.
It’s too bad they had to hijack the Super Bowl to do it. But for those of us not in the targeted demographic, we’ll hardly notice. None of these marketing shenanigans are going to impact the telecast of the game – unless the Mancrunch people have a “Heidi moment” planned for the fourth quarter.
UPDATE: 02/03 @ 10:00 pm – Popped back into the office this evening and found a link to an article covering this issue that included an interview with me. Big thanks to Michael Tripplet at Mediaite.com for taking the time out of his day to call me and talk about this entire situation in more detail.
