A history of brands hacking Wikipedia

The North Face found itself in hot water this week when it hacked Wikipedia for its own marketing stunt. Violating Wikipedia’s paid advocacy guidelines, The North Face’s Brazilian office, working with Leo Burnett Tailor Made, switched images on Wikipedia pages of popular outdoor travel destinations to images of athletes wearing its products in order to appear higher in Google search. In response, Wikipedia updated The North Face’s Wikipedia page with a section linking to information on its Wikipedia deception. Rearing from plenty of backlash online, The North Face has apologized and ended the campaign. The hacking attempt is nothing new to Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia launched in 2001, multiple brands and agencies have manipulated the site’s open format, which allows anyone to edit articles, for their own marketing gain. Among brands previously called out are Burger King, SeaWorld and NBC News. Violations of trust Of course, Wikipedia has conflict-of-interest and paid-disclosure policies in place to eliminate articles that that mislead its large audience. After all, it’s accessed by more than 1.5 billion unique devices a month and is edited more than 350 times a minute. That’s according to Zack McCune, senior global brand manager at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and its 250,000 volunteer editors, who have greater editing powers than the general public. But clearly, such policies haven’t stopped brands like The North Face. “When brands... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'

[ Advertising Age | 2019-05-31 19:53:32 UTC ]
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