As part of my regular morning routine I was reading the latest Penny Arcade webcomic.
It was about Sony and the PSP, in general Sony is always good to take a potshot at. But today’s potshot was based upon lots of ammunition and comes with some weight from the FTC to boot.
The FTC has ruled that companies engaging in Word-of-Mouth marketing that compensates the word-of-mouth participants, that the participants must make the compensation known. This has typically been defined as “shilling”.
Tycho points out the important distinction between Viral Marketing and Guerrilla Marketing. The fact that an ad agency cannot create Viral Marketing is extremely important. Word-Of-Mouth, a form of Viral Marketing is supposed to be organic. [...]