Has Ten been ‘leaking’ its shows to YouTube in a PR stunt? I think so
So here’s a curious thing.
A press release from Network Ten Publicity about the 7PM Project arrived in my inbox on Friday. It urged journos to follow a YouTube link to view a clip from the show.
The clip from The 7pm Project was innocuous enough, featuring James Mathison backstage at Miss World Australia.
The YouTube channel has the user name “notabadlogin”. It contains only clips from Ten, which isn’t unexpected when Ten Publicity is pointing journalists towards it. Indeed, as the clip was only posted shortly before the press release to journalists was emailed out, it certainly leads one to the assumption that the same person was responsible for both things. It usually takes YouTube about 24 hours to fully index new uploads to make them easily located.
Yeah, I’d say so, there were some fake masterchef tweets as well lines like ” I’m enjoying watching masterchef with my whole family” seemed a bit weird at the time, considering most where coming up with fun terms to describe contestants. Or talking about what was actually happening.
So it would come as no surprise that TEN woould do that.
And they expected that to go viral…
Also the quality of the video is too high.
Nothing suprises me with Ten…they have been in enough strife with various things over the last few years so why would not do a PR stunt…
I have nothing against PR stunts – if they work. Ten obviously has little idea of how to harness the grass-roots potential of this kind of marketing. Simply labeling something ‘leaked’ does not a viral make.
As a PR I don’t understand why Channel Ten needs to “fake” a leak just to get coverage. If the program is any good (yes this is potentially where my argument comes unstuck) then it should gain a momentum of its own.
Fake promotion is not clever, everyone see’s through it and the negative comments – like this one – don’t enhance reputation.