Bloggers Despise Fake Coke Zero Blog

Posted on January 26, 2006

The Age has an article about the Coke Zero campaign which included a Zero Movement website. This site contained a fake blog that was designed to look like it was written by an real person. The blog did not have the Coke bottle images and Coke branding that can be found on the current version of the site. The fake blog has come under fire from a number of blogs, especially advertising and marketing blogs.

The zero movement website features a manifesto, downloads of its branding material, and blog-type entries on topics that pose wistful questions like: "Why can't every weekend be long?" and "why can't I still get toys for Christmas?"

Although the goal was to tease the market and create some buzz among the web-savvy "neos" in the twenty something age-bracket, the blogging community has issued its own verdict.

Those searching out blogger commentary on the zero movement are likely to find posts along the lines of: "How many ad agencies does it take to patronise a demographic?"

If you want to go fake you are better off with a character blog. Most bloggers don't like character blogs either but they aren't attacked quite as viciously as fake person blogs. Overall, the Coke Zero blog only has 31 inbound links from Technorati so apart from being linked to by blogs that hate it there was little interest in the blog overall.

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