I’ve seen this advertised on the London Underground and the London train network and because of the semi-subversive creative and lack of a brand was fairly curious. However, the fact that they were advertising at all made me skeptical of the motives for the campaign.
If you follow this link then it appears that my skepticism was well founded as the Information Revolution is just a campaign for the search engine Ask. As a consumer I felt pretty annoyed that a huge company had tried to dupe me, as an advertising professional I felt disappointed that a company would try and do something like this – we know consumers are smart so why treat them like idiots?
This whole campaign feels pretty poorly thought through. OK i know Google is an incredibly dominant competitor but if you can’t take them on at their own game, innovate. Don’t launch an anonymous campaign playing on public paranoia about the web.
Organic Frog (who’s photo is above) says:
“Too many marketing campaigns are using the revolution theme to promote their not so innovative service or products… Trying to entertain people and play with the audience is fine, but when we claim it is objective, this is untrue. They are claiming a false revolution in a desperate attempt to engage people without realizing that when people discover the pathetic truth they will be pissed off and have negative feelings about the brand.”
It’s not a revolution, it’s Ask trying to make themselves a few more $$$
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