We only comment on campaigns when they are either really good or totally awful. Here’s on from the bad pile:
L’Oréal has created a campaign for their product Garnier with the help of Avenue A/Razorfish, part of Microsoft, and Kirt Gunn, an agency in New York that specializes in interactive advertising. The team has created a site, blog and videos for a fake show called “The Harry Situation,” which was sponsored by Garnier. The “show” is filled with heavy product pushing, which supposedly caused a creator of the series to hijack the site and expose the over-commercialism. Yeah. He begins blogging video clips that are excerpts from the episodes of “The Harry Situation.
Above is a Garnier rep disavowing the show as part of the campaign.
“The Harry Situation” is being billed as “viral.” We hate pointing this out, yet again, but you can’t launch a campaign as “viral.” It either goes viral or it doesn’t and in the case of “The Harry Situation,” it looks like it isn’t going to go viral. Check out the low, low views on YouTube right now. Also… the blog doesn’t allow viewers to embed the content, so um… how viral are you guys really going to go?
Anyway, the creators told the Herald Tribune that:
“The site becomes the buzz factor and consumers who know about it can brag they’re in the ‘in’ crowd.”
HAHAHAHAHA. Come on. That’s funny! The “in crowd” for this campaign? No way. Doesn’t exist. The concept doesn’t allow it. It’s not even remotely interesting, sticky, cool, ground breaking and yes, we’re ranting and going to shut up now, but hahahahahaha.