August 2, 2000

8:13 AM

Rubberburner.com has been making the rounds via email and weblog, as has supergreg.com. They both look a little too "perfect" to be true, don't they? Turns out they're both carefully crafted ad sites, designed to sell us Lee jeans. Will we be seeing more of the Mahir ad model? I wonder how they went about spreading it initially....
posted by jkottke (29 comments total)

Supergreg is registered to Fallon, who brought us "Dick," the best Miller Lite spokesman EVAH. Good work!
posted by mimi at 8:26 AM on August 2, 2000

You know, I hate to say it, but building a web tie-in for an ad campaign like this might actually work.
Of course, it remains to be seen what they're gonna be selling (well, jeans, yes, but specifically) and how they're gonna follow through.
posted by jsapn at 8:29 AM on August 2, 2000

WhoIs confirms both sites are registered to Fallon.

Jason, where'd you get the info that it's a Lee Jeans campaign?
posted by Tubes at 8:43 AM on August 2, 2000

Whoops. Never mind. Buddylee.com just finally finished loading in another window & I see what's up...
posted by Tubes at 8:44 AM on August 2, 2000

Is it just me or does every photo at the supergreg.com site look doctored to enhance supergreg's uni-brow?
posted by mathowie at 8:58 AM on August 2, 2000

Yeah, Lee has been a client of Fallon's for years.
posted by jkottke at 8:59 AM on August 2, 2000

Well I've seen the commercial with Super Greg challenging Buddy Lee many times, but I havent seen Curry anywhere yet.
posted by deckard at 10:30 AM on August 2, 2000

You mean that Curry, the slim and handsome Italian race car driver with terra-cotta Fabio locks that I dream about every night, isn't real?

I've given that leather-wearing poser three links on my weblog. This is rich.
posted by the webmistress at 11:09 AM on August 2, 2000

I'm not a webmaster, but I play one on my web site.

Where is Jean Baudrillard when we need him?
posted by EssenDreck at 11:17 AM on August 2, 2000

>
> I wonder how they went about spreading it initially....
>

I think that I first saw Curry on cruel.com, then stileproject.com made a remark or two about them, the supergreg popped up on some weblogs. The rest just snowballed, very quickly too. Like within the last three weeks.

Anyway, my hat is off... brilliant work.

I don't think this will be the end by any means. We better figure a way to deliver the billions and trillions of dollars in internet revenues to "Tha Man." Because banner ads are just not cutting it anymore.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 11:54 AM on August 2, 2000

I agree that banner ads aint cuting it anymore. But do we really want advertising to blend into artistic and personal sites so well that we can't tell the difference anymore? Both the Curry and Super Greg sites are hilarious, and humorous advertising never bothers me much, no matter how it's presented. But I worry about crafty marketing schemes weaseling their way into content, be it in a website, a movie, or a TV show.
posted by sixfoot6 at 12:16 PM on August 2, 2000

Ok, so it's good. Is it bad?

My outlook on this sort of thing is: *somewhere* on the site, admit it's an ad, and have a sense of humor about the whole thing, and I'll be impressed. You're allowed to hide it a *little*: if I don't get the joke, it wasn't *for* me...

Otherwise, you're a shithead.
posted by baylink at 12:19 PM on August 2, 2000

No interesting comments in the source, but you *did* notice that Fallon McElligott has good taste in HTML creation programs, right?
posted by baylink at 12:33 PM on August 2, 2000

Also, here's another one: Born to Destroy
posted by Dean_Paxton at 1:12 PM on August 2, 2000

I like the hoaxes that never admit they are hoaxes, personally.
posted by rcade at 1:16 PM on August 2, 2000

Egads...what if Matt's been having us on all this time, and MeFi is a hoax? (Admittedly, Zach and Eric are pretty hard to believe at times, and don't even get me started on WWWendall. But I'd be a bit distraught to discover that I too am a fictional construct, soon to be caught shilling for the Gap or somesuch. :-))
posted by bradlands at 1:26 PM on August 2, 2000

The Gap, eh? Isn't pretty obvious by this point that the whole "weblog" thing is construct of the CafePress and PayPal Consortium (CPPPC)? Nice attempt at a distraction though.
posted by sylloge at 1:53 PM on August 2, 2000

Curses, they've figured me out, and mere hours before I was going to start cashing in with the "Babe the Singing Bar-B-Q Baby Back Ribs" t-shirt...

You think I'm kidding... you know I'm not kidding... you're going to go visit oneswellfoop.com TOMORROW (8/3) to see if I'm kidding...

BTW, the name's WWWWendEll... WWWWendall is the webmaster for Arrested Development's fan site...
posted by wendell at 2:13 PM on August 2, 2000

Shame on you, Matt, for fabricating thousands of MeFi users just to try to trick me into buying a mug or T-shirt.
posted by sixfoot6 at 2:57 PM on August 2, 2000

By the way, I just learned that Anti-Porn is actually an ad for Monistat 7.
posted by aaron at 11:08 PM on August 2, 2000

Wired News has an article on this, with quotes from this thread.
posted by jkottke at 7:39 AM on August 3, 2000

Uh-oh. In that case I take back the part where I said I had the hots for monobrow. That did post, right?
posted by dhartung at 8:04 AM on August 3, 2000

Wow. Wired's watching MeFi. I feel so... In the loop.
posted by cCranium at 8:34 AM on August 3, 2000

Damn you, Kottke.

Hey, Wired? That's 'baylink.pitas.com'. Please spell it right. :-)
posted by baylink at 11:42 AM on August 3, 2000

Yay! I got called a sucker!
posted by magnetbox at 9:23 AM on August 4, 2000

I agree that these type of promotional sites are so much better and cooler than banner ads (as if that needed saying). I don't feel hoodwinked or anything. But I'm also not going to go out and buy Lee jeans. I only wish they had done a bit more with the pages...perhaps made the site bit deeper (add'l pages, links) like the space ghost site.

Also, I am reminded that Levi's has done some interesting web projects in the past, which although perhaps a bit more literal, were more likely to encourage repeat visits by featuring web toys, exclusives, updates, etc. In addition, the approach to web promotion used by companies like Altoids is to my mind the sort of marketing strategy that should be encouraged. All in all, I'm glad that big ad agencies and corporations are trying new, creative approaches to promoting products, etc. But then again, I think that in order for this more sophisticated (?) type of advertising to really come into its own, companies will have to be a bit patient re: immediate sales results. Lots of really great advertising campaigns have been nixed because although they were memorable and even became cultural touchstones, they did not move units off the shelf.
posted by metascene at 4:34 PM on August 4, 2000

seen this? from the horse's mouth. courtesy of dabitch, who runs ad-rag.com.

posted by Zeldman at 9:32 AM on August 5, 2000

An ad? Does anyone think that this tool is also just a weird ad site?

http://www.randywanker.com/

He seems too crass to be anything commercial, but so was that Curry guy.

Jeff
posted by jazzyjeff at 4:41 PM on February 5, 2001