Coke's agency f**ks-up big time There's a special kind of unreality that exists in an agency. They are places where the laws of gravity and physics don't apply. Take the Coke Zero debacle. Aimed at the most ad-savvy, cynical market of them all - young males - the agency thought it could get away with a fake blog site that pretended it was a authentic expression of young-male-on-the-street opinion and angst. The efforts at creating verisimilitude (the appearance of truth) included fake dates on blogs and fake comments by fake visitors.
One problem: the target audience is also the most net savvy segment in the market. They saw through the bullshit, and blasted it, setting up counter-blogs - zeromovement.org - and anti-web sites - www.fuckzerocoke.com - all of which created a viral anti-zerocoke movement.
The first mistake - revealing Coke's lack of authenticity - wasn't as revealing of the agency's stupidity as its second mistake - not registering all the anti-coke URLs imaginable to block the humiliation the brand now enjoys.  ¶ 2:40 AM