9.7.00
The Revelations of Chris and Luke
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Apocalyptic Signs on the Dotted Line
Their smiles are demonic. Their intentions are flagrantly mercenary. One is the author of the wildly successful manual, "How To Get Into Concerts For Free." The other is the lead crooner and guitarist for the redundancy-prone, Jersey coast super-group, Big Fat Huge.

Do you give up? They're Chris and Luke, the first (wannabe) corporately sponsored college students!

Yes, the towheaded, teenage toadies wish to do the bidding of their potential sponsors, whomever they may be. (Well, perhaps they'd have to think twice about a Mountain Dew sponsorship.) However, although the two high school seniors have proclaimed undying loyalty and attention to their future spokes-sycophant positions, business and marketing course work will come first. "Right now we have seven companies interested," boasts Chris Barrett in an 8/29 interview with the BrandEra Times.

The conflict of interest potential is staggering. Just imagine if the whoring hopefuls were to be sponsored by Trojan condoms and Magic: The Gathering trading cards -- a tragic fate indeed!

"We've worked with a business consultant and made a business plan," notes Barrett, failing to divulge the consultant's day job as neighborhood lemonade stand manager. From the looks of their website, ChrisAndLuke.com, the biz-consultant may be blind, too.

The cocky kiddies are completely confident in their kowtowing capabilities. "Others won't have the skill to sit down with a company and come up with a marketing strategy plan," assures Barrett. "We have the marketing background to carry through on our promise for our corporate sponsors."

Hey, it appears that all those years of convincing the Haddonfield Memorial High School football team to take his lunch money in lieu of daily beatings weren't for naught.

One wonders why the self-proclaimed marketing experts need succumb to the rigors of higher education at all. But then again, their grass roots strategy will require actual student status to warrant the ever-elusive acceptance of their ultra-ad-savvy college cohorts. And hell, that's where all the girls will put out, right?

Who raised these pubescent pitch-pimps, anyway -- Ronald McDonald? Can't they see that there's more to this soul-selling expedition than free tuition and fleeting fame? Well, if anything, at least Chris and Luke are smart enough to request payment for corporate sponsorship, unlike most people who actually shell out cash for the privilege of donning Old Navy and Nike logos.

And They Wrapped Him in Swaddling Brands
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It's a -- $5,000.00 Check!
At the very least, Chris and Luke are, though debatably misguided, fully grown young adults. It's a sad day when an innocent child is subjected to harsh press coverage and Faustian demise for a mere $5,000.00. No, this isn't a Gary Coleman update. This is a chilling tale about a travesty of goodwill and the appropriate use of acronyms. This is the story of the Internet Underground Music Archive baby: baby IUMA (pronounced EYE-UMA). Born of humble (and according to anonymous Lowbrow Lowdown sources, toothless) parents in Hutchinson, Kansas, Iuma Dylan-Lucas Thornhill was the first winner of the music promotion company's "Name Your Baby Iuma" contest, according to an 8/28 PR Week brief.

"Christen your little bundle of joy with a name that's synonymous with fresh, underground music and we'll feed the tyke with your choice of $5,000 or new music for life," prompts the serpentine promo copy on the IUMA site.

As featured in the site's contest FAQs section, the campaign idea was developed out of sheer necessity (a.k.a. lack of VC funding). "We couldn't afford TV or radio ads, and we couldn't afford giant billboards! Then we realized that these ads get far fewer impressions than someone's name! We decided to throw our advertising dollars into a campaign that will have a lifetime of impact!"

Gee, do you think the marketing geniuses will throw any money towards baby Iuma's inevitable psychotherapy sessions?

Born August 11th, Iuma Dylan-Lucas is a potentially egomaniacal Leo, who, chances are, will resent his 'rents for their lack of consideration towards his individuality. On the other hand, the wee-one will, no doubt, dig the spotlight. Iuma's 22-year-old pappy, Travis seems comfortable with the sale of his child's identity. Yet, methinks he's more comfortable with the click-through to the IUMA page for his "Hard-core/Industrial, Electronic, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal" band, Opus. Plus, as the base bassist forecasts in the PR Week story, "the kid will have a cool story when he grows up." Well, Travis, that's assuming li'l Iuma makes it through grade school alive with a girl's name!

Taking ICONOCAST to Task
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Fluffed-up Numbers Get Fluffy Coverage
It's been a long time coming, but site ratings auditors have finally launched an offensive that's sure to put the troops over at Media Metrix and other audience measurement services into attack mode. As announced at the Jupiter Online Ad Forum in August, and reported in the 8/31 issue of ICONOCAST, the three big names in auditing, Engage I/PRO, BPA and ABC are activating their metric powers to form Audit Central. Sites will opt-in to be listed on Audit Central, beginning in September.

"We're not going head-to-head against the [research] panel companies," notes I/PRO's GM, Bill Matthews. "We're just going to fill the gaps."

This could be a beautiful thing. A singular non-biased barometer is long overdue when it comes to site measurement. As many of y'all are well aware, discrepancies among the numbers provided by ratings services and the methodologies in determining those numbers are staggering. And in this volatile market, valuations based on seemingly arbitrary stats can make or break a business.

All right -- enough of that. Here's the point: the CAST succeeded its Audit Central coverage with a story featuring FreeLotto and its ad sponsorship offerings. "Somewhat brilliantly," reports the newsletter, "FreeLotto.com meets the challenge of the pay-per-click model by requiring players to click on sponsor banners to place the maximum number of daily 'free bets.' "

Did the CAST crew fail to see the opportunity for juxtaposition here? Evidently, the answer is 'yup.' FreeLotto's tactics contribute immensely to the bloated numbers of unique visitors to its sponsor's sites; in order to place a "free bet," folks must click to visit an advertiser's site. Would you call that a qualified lead? ICONOCAST, displaying a lapse in critical thinking ability, referred to FreeLotto's underhanded strategy as "somewhat brilliant." The same newsletter issue referred to the lack of reliability in audience measurement metrics by commenting: "And the way we hear it, there are many gaps."

All this...and not even a hint of irony! Well, at least ICONOCAST readers can continue to rely upon that Pulitzer chick's party-prattle.

Sly Script-ers
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New Faces for the Virtual Post Office Wall
Licentious rumors abound and steamy tales of covert coders run rampant. In the meantime, piles of checks, all for the mysterious amount of $11.52, are cashed-in to purchase the complete X-Men action figure collection. Could this be a trailer for the latest Sci-Fi Channel series? Well, perhaps, but if you're an advertiser who's paying for referrals to your site, it could be the opening scene of your worst nightmare.

Talk about a cloaked caper: even the kings of IT gossip at The Register have kept the companies' names concealed in this story. As uncovered in its vague 8/31 article, the site told of "a large-scale consumer online email site" that aimed to boost its customer acquisition rates by offering pay for referrals to its advertisers' sites.

"But we know of at least one company that abused this setup, creating instead tens of thousands of fake addresses and taking the money," reports the UK site. "[T]he company wrote some code that gets those email addresses to write to each other, put it on a server and watched the money roll in." Call it never-ending electronic chain mail disguised as viral marketing.

The Register disputes the theory that requests originating through the same IP address would deter the "email company" from terminating the accounts, since gaining new site registrants is its true mission, even if those registrants are dummies. In the end, it's the advertiser that gets the shaft, opines the article's author, Kieren McCarthy: "Many of the hits [the advertiser] is paying for may exist only in a virtual way -- it's like paying for billboard advertising and people not bothering to put it up. It's one of the oldest scams in the book...."

Then again, reporting a story that's based almost entirely on hearsay, besides being a great way to drive click-through, is also pretty sneaky....

Lycos: Go Get a Clue!
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Where's Captain Kangaroo When You Need Him?
Sometimes, broaching certain topics of discussion with the young'uns can be a daunting task. Responding diplomatically to touchy offline inquiries like "why does that big stick in mommy's top drawer hum?" is trying enough. Now, to make matters worse, you've got to contend with online slime. And by online slime, I mean the calculating cookie culprits that stalk your munchkin's every Web move.

Never fear! Your ol' pal, Lycos, everybody's favorite spokes-canine, is here to ease your instinctive parental concern. And if you've ever wondered whether you could get voiceover work, even though you have virtually no acting capabilities, Lycos' latest production should allay those worries as well!

In conjunction with its kids' site, Lycos Zone, the portal has released a two-minute cartoon short, co-sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and intended to teach children about Internet privacy issues, according to an 8/30 Yahoo! Finance release. It's too bad that, along with its consideration for kids' safety on the Net, Lycos couldn't have considered its viewers' sensibilities as well.

Consider the poor choice of actors whose voices are featured in "Web Safety for Kids." A young girl's character is portrayed with about as much emphasis as a driving manual reading starring Ben Stein and Janeanne Garafalo. What's worse is the overtly out-of-place sound of Zach, a "boy" who claims, in (get this) the voice of a middle-aged man whose accent seems to be an amalgamation of Middle-Eastern, Russian, and possibly Southeast Asian, "My parents taught me about privacy policies a few weeks ago." At the estimated age of 42, perhaps it's about time Zach moved out of the house....

Sure, the cartoon does have educational value. For instance, as he recaps in the film's finale, Lycos instructs his audience to "never give out your last name, address or phone number." Lycos forgot a couple of things, though: never produce a cartoon if the FTC insists upon supplying voiceover actors from among its own ranks, and never, ever let the dog direct.