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Friday, September 14, 2012

Guerrilla Marketing, or Something A Lot Worse?

I have a niece who does music among other artistic things.  She noticed a sudden increase in hits on a YouTube video of hers, and when she tracked it down, she found this ad on Craigslist here in Boise:


She doesn't live in Boise.  She lives in California.  And you can be quite sure that she would never be interested in getting together with others to form a band with the same goal as Tim Hawkins (the second video linked in this posting).  I think Hawkins' song is pretty funny, and of course, you know who I participated in the Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.  


As you might expect, she was upset that someone was using her video to promote right wing stuff.  Her perception is that someone is posting ads like this to promote Tim Hawkins's comedy act.  

I read the ad above, and I see something a lot scarier: someone in the North End of Boise (sort of the Berkeley of Idaho) is trying to find social conservative women.  Whoever is posting these ads is clearly not my niece, and I am a bit concerned that the ad poster may be looking for what he perceives as naive sorts to meet somewhere that might be quite dangerous for them.

How do you read the ad above?

UPDATE: Dawn emphasizes her lack of political engagement.

10 comments:

  1. Looks like a troll. Probably some college kid that thinks he's clever

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  2. There's another, similar ad on Smurly.com, posted the same day.

    http://www.smurly.com/112/posts/7-Community/112-musicians/3194858156-Female-indie-artist-seeks-music-partner-s-North-end-.html

    It doesn't have the Tim Hawkins video link, only your niece's.

    It has a lot more text. The author claims to be from Berkeley.

    After the video link, there's an entire paragraph of text in quotes, which seems to be a discussion of a song. The other ad's section about "MY greatest passion..." seems to be inserted in the middle of this paragraph.

    There's yet another posting on e-classifieds.me, which seems to be missing most of the content and any links.

    There is a real Cactus Dawn apparently (Dawn Goldwasser); is that your niece?

    She posted a complaint to Craigslist about these ads - she apparently thinks Tim Hawkins is doing it. It's beem removed (still appears in Google searches but not in Google's cache).

    (That seems to happen a lot. Google searching "Frob Thurb" returns a hit with sample text containing "Frob Thurb", but it's not in Google's cache of the page. I think Google updates its caches without updating its search tables.)

    I don't know what's going on. Hawkins has a website and dozens of concerts booked. This doesn't seem like any sort of useful marketing for him.

    Your suspicion doesn't make much sense either. The indie-music milieu doesn't seem like a place to troll for naive conservative girls. And the ad is for "music partners", sex unspecified.

    One might try to find out who placed the original ads.

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  3. Dawn is my niece. My concern isn't that some guy is trolling for naive conservative girls to chat them up, but to lure them into a situation where they get raped.

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  4. "My greatest passion is hanging out at fast food joints to promote my social agenda."

    That is not a comment by someone who is looking to be viewed as a conservative. Pure snark.

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  5. By linking to her video, he give HER some control over the message. (Kinda like when someone hotlinks to an image on your server and you change the image to something nasty underneath their nose).

    She merely has to edit the comment under her video on Youtube to loudly disclaim any link to her video from a fake classified.

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  6. Anon Y. Mous: Actually, it might be a comment by someone who holds conservatives in complete contempt, and thinks that this is how they think.

    Think of the incredibly nasty things that the left says about conservative women, and this creep that was threatening Willow Palin with rape. There are some pretty unhinged people out there...like Brett Kimberlin, but without the cunning and planning.

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  7. Clayton is right. This is how a leftist "thinks" conservatives think. Remember some 10+ years ago when Henry Winkler played a "Conservative" talk show host in some half-a-season sitcom? The Onion did better. That this person tipped his hand is another matter.

    My brother and I are leasing the house we own together, and the agent listed in craigslist. Someone in ALGERIA of all places listed the same house in facebook at 1/3 the rent, and asked for money up front (waaay up front, as in pay me money and you can see the house). Someone was suckered, and paid, someone else saw the listing and happened to drive by and knew our agent, so he called her. Our agent filed a complaint with Craigslist. Somehow that seems like an inadequate response, and if something were to happen because of the advert you talk about, a complaint is an anemic response. I don't know what a proper response is; catching him and administering percussive attitude readjustment is frowned on.

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  8. Hi everyone, this is Dawn, Clayton's niece.

    Clayton: Just so you know, I don't care if it was a right wing or left wing who posted this. I really have no interest in politics what-so ever, and i don't follow it. What upset me was the use of my content, my name and likeness (and as music of which I hold copyright as well as protection from BMI). It could have been anybody posting it, with any reason behind it and I would be annoyed because I have worked many long hours on my art. Nobody likes to be exploited.

    Windy Wilson: you are right Craigslist does have a ton of that copy and past stuff for housing. It's really got a lot of scams, that's why they are helpful in finding the IP of scammers. Because of the details (not all of which are posted here) both law enforcement and attorneys agree that these internet ads were posted by an internet marketing firm; likely one specializing in attracting competitor's customers.


    Rich Rostrom. Thanks for the link I didn't see that one in my search (smurly.com) I knew about the e-classifieds and cragislist ads. It's weird. It appears to be taken from an ad I posted briefly on craigslist here in Los Angels, except that the smurly one has more of my original ad, and it only has has the line inserted about fast food. Also, I do not think Tim Hawkins would personally do this. Can I ask how you know that I complained to craigslist? Was there a link on line about it?

    Anon Y. Mous: Tim Hawkins seems snarky and glib, making fun of everything, parodying a Beatles song, etc. He does not seem too conservative at all. Perhaps conservative is not his market? Or he's trying to branch out? I don't know because I only got through about ten seconds of his video.

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  9. Dawn: Google turned up a complaint posting on Craiglist. In fact it is still the first hit from Google for "Cactus Dawn Boise". The actual posting has been removed. Below is the Google sample.

    #
    re. "Tim Hawkins" WTF? you pretend you are a ... - Boise Craigslist
    boise.craigslist.org/muc/3253485561.html
    Sep 6, 2012 ... this dude "Tim Hawkins" has been posting on Boise Craigslist saying he is a
    female indie artist, and using my name (I am called Cactus Dawn) ...
    #

    Re Tim Hawkins: most of his bookings are at evangelical churches. I don't know that he is politically conservative, but almost certainly socially conservative.

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  10. Hi, it's Dawn again. Thanks for responding to me Rich Rostrom. Just to let you gues know, I saw that Chick-Fil-A is now officially supporting the "left wingers" on the whole gay marriage thing, (liknk) http://chicagophoenix.com/2012/09/18/chick-fil-a-agrees-to-end-anti-gay-donations-mandates-equal-treatment-of-gays/ apparently they are expanding their "urban market" so, it is possible that the marketing firm in question may have actually been working for them and not this comedy act that sings about them. Strange.

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