• by Shankar Gupta , December 14, 2006

Another fake blog scandal is roiling the blogosphere.

This one--the latest in a string of stealth marketing efforts--involves a "flog," or fake blog, created by viral marketing firm Zipatoni to promote the Sony PSP. The blog, alliwantforxmasisapsp.com, was supposedly authored by an amateur hip-hop artist "Charlie"--whose cousin, "Pete," craved a PSP under the tree.

Written in faux hip-hop and Internet lingo, the phony blog, which went live at the end of last month, quickly raised suspicions. Last week, some readers conducted a WHOIS search, which unmasked the site's registrars as Zipatoni.

Sony Wednesday released a statement acknowledging that the blog was phony. "Sony Computer Entertainment America developed alliwantforxmasisapsp.com as a humorous site targeting those interested in getting a PSP system this holiday season," it read. "We've now added a posting that provides this clarification to consumers visiting the site." The company did not comment further.

Also on Wednesday, the authors admitted they created the blog as a marketing tool. "As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony," the author wrote. "Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP."

After the confession was posted, comments on the site were shut down.

Zipatoni did not return phone calls for comment, but a commenter claiming to be a Zipatoni executive replied to criticism in the fake blog's comments. "Please know that we approached the client initially with this scenario and they said 'who cares if people find out? As long as it is funny, we do this stuff all of the time,'" the poster wrote.

Long before Sony and Zipatoni came clean, however, readers had figured out that the blog was likely a fake. For one thing, the wording of posts struck many readers as too over-the-top to be authentic. For instance, "Charlie" described himself as a "designer. artist. Playa," and "Pete" wrote that he is a "rocker. playa. Hater."

The site also used a filter that disallowed marketing-related words, including "viral," "advertisement," and "campaign." That filter also raised eyebrows, with readers wondering why any blogger would attempt to ban those particular terms.

A number of users posted angry comments on the blog, accusing the creators of trying to deceive them. In addition, pundits in the gaming space lambasted the fake blog. On Penny-Arcade.com, a popular Web comic and blog, Jerry Holkins, who goes by the pen name Tycho, described the promotion as "transparent, insulting, idiotic, and ineffective," and criticized Zipatoni for hiding the blog's affiliation with Sony. "When we are not aware of the message, or when the agents of the message misrepresent themselves, we call this 'deception,'" he wrote.

Sony's fake PSP blog comes on the heels of another well-publicized fake blog incident. In October, retail giant Wal-Mart and its PR agency, Edelman, were found to have been promoting the brand with a fake travel blog. Edelman, which was responsible for the blogs, was urged by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association--where it holds a seat on the board--to overhaul its blogging strategy.

Sony's PSP has been in hot water before over fake viral promotions. Last year, the company was criticized for hiring graffiti artists in major cities to paint murals of kids playing with the handheld. In some cases, angry artists painted their criticisms over the ads, writing "Get out of my city," and "advertising directed at your counter-culture," according to a report in Wired magazine.

Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing officer for buzz-measurement firm Cymfony, said that marketers need to realize that deceptive advertising is a bad bet. "The blog world is a very open, self-policing and pretty unforgiving world when you try to trick them with things like this," he said. "I don't understand why marketers, after all the different examples of this, don't get the message that you can't get away with faking these kinds of blogs."