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North Face Apologizes and Ends Campaign Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote Its Products

The Leo Burnett project sparked a public rebuke from the Wikimedia Foundation

north-face-apology-hed-page-2019 — In their case study, North Face and Leo Burnett boasted of 'hacking' Wikipedia to include product placement in destination photos.Leo Burnett Tailor Made

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While people and businesses are always trying to take advantage of Wikipedia’s open-to-all approach to information, not many openly brag about it.

But that’s exactly what The North Face and Brazilian agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made did this week in announcing a campaign called “Top of Images,” which aimed to put branded North Face photography atop Google search results by adding them to location pages on Wikipedia. The case study claimed the effort was made by “collaborating with Wikipedia,” which the site later claimed was not true.

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