marketing

In Norway, where I am currently located, advertising for gaming is illegal. The same goes for alcohol, tobacco and many other things. 

Still, there are a couple of Norwegian TV-channels that floods its poor watchers with gaming adverts - because the company is located in London, and not within the Norwegian jurisdiction. And the past 3-4 months, the ads for gaming in these channels has increased dramatically. 

What I have noticed in the same period, is a dramatic increase in spam emails promoting craps, poker and a large amount of related ads. This led me to asking one of my security buddies in the US if the same is going on in the US. He said that no, no such trend was evident over there.

This has led me to consider that Spammers are no longer only using geographic data to tune their spam, but also offer to target particular areas and times when the clients are buying ads in other medias too - thus strengthening the message to the customer. 

This cross-branding, or cross marketing, is nothing new in RL - you see it in TV, papers and magazines around the year. What I find interesting is that now you can cross-brand yourself in magazines, TV, Radio AND by using spam - at the same time. 

After publishing my post on salmon fishing yesterday, I came about a Google Alert in my beloved RSS-reader and website monitor Snarfer.

The teaser text showing up in my reader is a cut'n'paste job from my website. Then there is a link to this url: http://blackforestdecor.blogspot.com/2007/09/google-alert-fishing_2713.html

(I will not link it - cut'n'paste if you want to see for yourself).

I thought they may have commented on my post, so I wanted to read it. I cannot help myself, I just love reading stuff people say about me. I was surprised when I was forwarded a couple of times, starting to expect a download, hoax or anything at least remotely exiting. Imagine my disappointment when my browser took me to this website: http://blackforestdecor.com (link not active of same reasons as above).

To me, this looks like a genuine shop. It looks like a place where I might even buy myself some stuff to my fishing cabin. But I must admit I do not approve on their marketing methods.

On the bottom of their web pages, they link to Hacker Safe. Which brings me to the reason for this post - is this marketing - or hijacking of content - hacker safe? Teaching your customers to expect one type of content, and then automatically forwarded to a shop? 

Another question I pose is whether or not this web site is legitimate? I imagine phishers and other criminal elements would love to use such a front to get you to slip them your CC number. PCI regulations makes that increasingly harder, but it is not impossible. 

It may also very well be a competitor, or angry customer (or others with bad intent) who has done the forwarding. Why? To discredit the company. If customers starts to associate the brand with hacker sites, downloading of virus or any other related activities, they will very soon turn their back to the store.

It takes a long time to build trust, and only one simple click to remove it!

One part of me is flattered by the fact someone have copied my content to promote their shop. But mostly I am annoyed that my content is used just like that, and without actually showing it, only automatically forwarding the reader to the shop.

What should I do in your opinion?