Facebook marketing - The Art of the Prank

Hate to be the bearers of bad news, but that dude riding an ostrich in rush-hour traffic was part of a viral marketing stunt. Shocker.

“Yep, That Video Of A Guy Riding An Ostrich Through Traffic Is Totally Fake”
by Lee Moran
Huffington Post
September 4, 2016

It was a brilliant idea to beat the traffic.

But sadly the viral video (above) of a man riding an ostrich to beat rush hour in Almaty, Kazakhstan, is totally fake.

The Bank of Astana claimed it was behind the hoax dash cam-style footage on Friday, after the video spread like wildfire across the web.

“What possessed us when creating this idea? The thought that many of us live bored and pragmatic lives,” the bank posted on Facebook.

“Team Bank of Astana believes that we need to stop just daydreaming “• and we must act to embody our wildest dreams, here and now,” it added. Read more.

What can happen if you open your floodgates (and those of your friends) to Facebook’s marketing machine?

I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days.
Here”s What It Did to Me
by Mat Honan
Wired
August 11, 2014

…I like everything. Or at least I did, for 48 hours. Literally everything Facebook sent my way, I liked””even if I hated it. I decided to embark on a campaign of conscious liking, to see how it would affect what Facebook showed me. I know this sounds like a stunt (and it was) but it was also genuinely just an open-ended experiment. I wasn”t sure how long I”d keep it up (48 hours was all I could stand) or what I”d learn (possibly nothing.)

Read the whole article here.

Tag: Facebook marketing

No Ostriches Were Harmed in the Making of This Marketing Campaign

“Liked” to the Max