The New York Times has an article today on a salacious buzz marketing campaign for mobile content provider Oasys Mobile that can be seen at Pherotones.com.

The article notes that nearly 80% of marketers spend money on buzz marketing, that buzz marketing is a $100-$150 million industry, and that Pherotones.com is averaging 10,000 page views a day. However, the success or failure of the campaign remains to be seen: Pherotones is only today linking over to Oasys. (Uh, why the wait?). A quarter-million dollars was spent developing this fake site and getting the word out. That’s a lot of of ringtone and wallpaper sales that need to be generated.

One of the most interesting elements here is the search engine optimization piece of the puzzle. The Oasys home page uses “ringtones” as a meta keyword a dozen times, which is likely to be viewed as trying to spam the search engines. Meanwhile, a peek at the meta keywords for the Pherotones home page reveals that users might come across Pherotones.com while searching for: Pheromone, Pherotone, Sex, Attraction, Dating, Mating, Matting, Enhancer, Enhanser, Sexy, Ringtones, Hot, Attracting men, Attracting women, Funny, Scientific, Feromones, Pheramones, Pheremone, Cell phone, Texting, Horny, Humping grandma, Wedding kiss, Gay wedding, Over eighteen, Auditory, pherotones.

How a search for “humping grandma” translates into a ringtone sale is beyond me … but hey, they made the business section of the Times. I guess that counts for something.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 8:52 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.