Ever Dream This Ad?

In terms of modern media and internet bullshit, at two weeks this storyÂ’s on the verge of being paleolithic. But a friend just sent me a link to a website that freaked him out: thisman.org. ItÂ’s a simple black & white site headlined with “EVER DREAM THIS MAN?” in 36pt Arial with a halved-font-size subtitle offering the ominous revelation that “every night throughout the world hundreds of people dream about this face“. It then goes on to describe the story of some unnamed psychologist in New York who had discovered that since 2006 over two thousand people from around the globe had seen This Man in their dreams. Except in Japan. Or I assume as much, because out of the 20 PDF flyers they have for download (and obvious distribution) in 20 different languages, not one of them is in Japanese.

I smelled bullshit off the bat and suspected a viral marketing campaign. After all, who wouldn’t? I assumed it was for some soon-to-be-released psychological thriller or horror flick. Maybe starring Bruce Willis.

A quick googling of “ever dream this man?” reeled in 191,000 search results. And a Binging of the same hit up 191 million results. Nevertheless, most results from both were just forums and aggregators, or blogs simply reposting the “history” of This Man. None were questioning it. None seemed to give it a second thought. They were finding it creepy. They were stating whether or not they had in fact seen This Man in the their dreams. I thought this was the fucking Snopes Generation. Apparently not. Because most people were taking it in hook, line and sinker.

Of course I eventually came across a site or two that smelled the viral fungus brewing. Jawbone.tv had posted Ever Dream This Man? Urban Myth, Viral Hoax or Terrifying Boogeyman? We shared the same (obvious) suspicion and they had already completed what was to be my next natural step –- a trip to the Whois lookup to find out, well, exactly who is This Man. Or at least who he’s registered to.

ItÂ’s there that mystery really starts to unravel. The site was first registered on 25-Jan-2008 to an Italy-based registrant named Andrea Natella, whose email (a.natella@guerrigliamarketing.it) is with Italian guerilla marketing firm guerrigliamarketing.it.

Pretty sloppy work for guerillas. Che would be disappointed. As Jawbone.tv pointed out — it’s only about 7 (to 10) bucks a year to hide your name.

The question now is whether This Man is selling:

1. a movie
2. a consumer good (energy drinks? sleeping pills?)
3. a hoax

There is one thing that throws me for a loop though. There are Google Ads at the bottom of the page. I can’t really see Google Ads in an ad campaign for a real product. So, perhaps the guys at guerrigliamarketing.it are just honing their skills with a hoax while picking up some Adwords rev on the side.

Tagged as: media, web