Petrochemical Perfection!

April 13, 2003 7:20 PM

Create a Plastic Paradise with Fant-O-Side! The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association actually took the time to put up a phony website to coordinate with its current ad campaign. Oh, I know this isn't a new technique - shoot, Lee Jeans did the same kind of thing way back in 2000 (as was noted here). Fair warning - don't click on any of the old links in the Wired article, unless you enjoy going to pop-up hell.
Surely, there've been more of this type of one-off phony site ...
posted by yhbc (9 comments total)

Okay, for anyone still desperate to see the original faux Buddy Lee sites, here they are in all their archived glory:

A saved copy of RubberBurner (Curry)

A mirror of Super Greg, and

The wayback machine's copy of the oft-forgotten third site in the Buddy Lee trilogy: "Born to Destroy"
posted by yhbc at 7:21 PM on April 13, 2003

Progressive Car Insurance has been featuring fake websites in their TV ads for a while:
InstantVoodoo.com gives you a cute little Flash Voodoo Doll (not quite up to the level of the average Friday Flash feature), and InstantlyBetter.com is fronting a little charity thing where you vote for who they're going to contribute a few sheckels to (but at the cost of giving your e-mail address to a CAR INSURANCE company?)
posted by wendell at 7:36 PM on April 13, 2003

Why are these considered "phony" websites? I see them as nothing more than advertising gimmicks to sell a product. I suspect, though, that I am not seeing the whole picture - was there supposed to be another site open in a window or something to actually tell me what was being sold? Or is this something I would have to be a US resident to understand?
posted by dg at 8:55 PM on April 13, 2003

I heard that inFant-O-Side is going to be the name of the next book by Peter Singer.
posted by ArcAm at 9:26 PM on April 13, 2003

Yeah, I have to agree with dg, especially about the Cedar "site". It's just a slow redirect from a single page...hardly a hoax or anything noteworthy. Just marketing people doing what marketing people do.
posted by dejah420 at 10:34 PM on April 13, 2003

Wait -- there is a Lumber Cartel? Damn, and here I thought all of those spammers were just paranoid lo these many years.
posted by thanotopsis at 8:01 AM on April 14, 2003

Why are these considered "phony" websites?
Actually, I said 'fake', not 'phony', because in the Prog Ins commercials, the sites did amazing, funny, and (fortunately) impossible things for websites to do, and the sponsor/advertiser had to buy those domains and put SOMETHING on them.

Was there supposed to be another site open in a window or something to actually tell me what was being sold?
No, but there is a copyright notice linking back to Progressive.com at the bottom of the page, and, hey, you notice that 'instant claims van' graphically zipping across the screen?

Is this something I would have to be a US resident to understand?
Do I have to explain EVERYTHING? Rhetorical question, of course I do. And, no, all you need to know is NEVER to buy car insurance from a company that has funny commercials on EVERY cable channel (at least here in California, Progressive and Geico have some of the HIGHEST rates - sorry Mr. Gecko).
posted by wendell at 12:32 PM on April 14, 2003

I was the one who said "phony", and maybe it was too loaded a term. I just meant sites that were put up to support or otherwise complement an existing site or campaign elsewhere (and actually, you're right, dg - the fant-o-side one would make more sense if you had seen the print ads showing the "phony" site next to the real ad). In any case, I was primarily interested in any others that might be out there, and wendell came through with a couple.
posted by yhbc at 12:40 PM on April 14, 2003

OK, I didn't see the van - probably because I opened the window and then, after clicking on the "enter", left it open and went on to the next one while it loaded. Yes, I saw the copyright notice but, unless I knew what progressive.com was selling, that would not help me much, would it? If I was a US resident, maybe it would mean more to me in the same way that the same site with "visit us at aami.com.au" at the bottom would mean more to me, but not to you.

I still do not see the issue with these sites - as dejah420 said, this is just marketing people doing what marketing people do. At least these marketing people have put a tiny bit of thought into their campaign and given us something more than just "BUY ME, GET LAID".
posted by dg at 3:12 PM on April 14, 2003