A very interesting thing happened yesterday and it deteriorated rapidly, as we predicted. It had to do with Land Rover, FNB, a media company called Mindshare and a sex tape.

So we published an article (here) about the fact that a Land Rover commercial was appearing as pre-roll on a hilarious website called What Would Tyler Durden Do (wwtdd.com). The pre-roll was appearing before the trailer for a sex tape. I must stress that wwtdd is not a porn site, but rather a pop culture mockery site. They were poking fun at the star of the sex tape and simply ran the trailer – not the actual sex tape.

This is interesting, I thought. I wonder if Land Rover have any idea that their ad is running as pre-roll for a sex tape trailer? Because the sex tape trailer doesn’t have any graphic scenes, the video could very easily be in the same category as, say, a Miley Cyrus music video. Then, depending on what ad network the video host was affiliated to, it would display pre-roll for any brands that have approved their publishing in a range of categories. The video host would detect that my browser is in SA and I would be served a ‘geographically relevant’ pre-roll ad. That was quite clearly what had occurred here.

So whether it was their intention or not, Land Rover and their media planners had placed an online commercial at the beginning of a sex tape trailer. With online brand fails dominating news and discussions all the time (see some examples here and here and here), this would surely make an interesting news item and hopefully generate some debate. Anyone who reads the top news/blog sites in the world (eg. gawker.com and the like) will know this type of content and tone dominates conversation.

So first came the phone call from Mallory at Mindshare, telling us that her client (Land Rover) was ‘freaking out’ and asking if we could remove the article. We explained to Mallory that we don’t really do that type of thing and removing the article would probably attract more attention, given the intelligence levels of the 2oceansvibe audience. She agreed. We said that it wouldn’t be long before the article was lower (and less visible) on the page and they (Land Rover) were welcome to submit a statement explaining how their ad got onto the sex tape trailer video, which we would gladly publish. She seemed to understand and accept that.

Not really.

A couple hours later she called and said this was unacceptable and that ‘they’ were about to contact their lawyers. We told her to go right ahead, as we had done nothing wrong. That was when she sent an email, making quite clear that she had absolutely no concept of what was going on. 

We knew this, because she said

1) It was impossible that the ad ran where we said it did and that we had fabricated the images and were being ‘trolls.’ We explained that screenshots by definition cannot be tampered with and that we are in fact a news site.

2) They had created a ‘mockup’ of 2oceansvibe branding on the same video – to illustrate the point – but decided not to send it to us (???). Again, we explained that we don’t have any pre-roll ads on the net and that would definitely indicate photoshopping and would therefore not be a screenshot.

3) Said that they had contacted Google who had confirmed the video in question doesn’t come up for any of the placements the ad had appeared on. Even though we had made clear in the article “The particular video host is not YouTube, but rather spinmediavideo.com.” Maybe the client has another company handling their stuff? Maybe you clicked the wrong box somewhere? Maybe another ‘account manager’ did some extra placing?

4) They had ‘negatively targeted’ all inappropriate content. Video host aside, they didn’t grasp the fact that the video itself was actually above board and could very easily feed from the same set of ads as ‘safe’ content like music or swimsuit videos. I hate to break it to you, but to truly serve your clients you need to do more than click the odd box online.

5) She said the story is “irrelevant, not particularly interesting and absolutely false.” Wrong on all three counts. The story is true, extremely relevant (given today’s obsession with the online world and all things media-managed) and pretty interesting, given the engagement we’ve received thus far.

A 2oceansvibe staffer went to the post on wwttd.com to check it out for himself. And would you believe it, an FNB ad appeared! We emphasised the point we were making further, by posting the identical article we did before, but replacing all Land Rover mentions/screenshots, with FNB. check that out here.

Obviously the FNB guy weighed in on Twitter.

Yes, we know that. But you’ve missed the point.

Although you did take the opportunity to publish how this came about – unlike Land Rover. Instead of making use of the offer to publish a statement (explaining the media glitch), someone completely out of their depth told us we were lying and that they were about to get a lawyer involved.

Look, we’re not trying to get into a slanging match here – we’re simply trying to illustrate that there is something amiss with the easy plug-and-play options media ‘strategists’ make use of when looking after a brand’s online identity. They might know more than their clients when it comes to digital and online, but do they know enough?

If brands want to get serious about digital advertising, surely we need to concede that something is broken with the way digital is being handled/managed?

We think this is an important discussion to have and we welcome comments below.