It’s only been a few months since its release, but the Zune has already entered the pantheon of free ringtones, weight-loss pills, and cheap penis enlargers. From Digital Audio Insider:
Microsoft is running a little Zune promotion — make MSN your homepage and you might win a free Zune.
Which I learned from a comment to this recent post. Before deleting it (I’m trying to keep comment spam to a minimum) I decided to cross-reference the time of the comment with the server logs to see who left it. It looks like it came from someone working for Mr. Youth, a marketing/promo company that lists — surprise — Microsoft as one of its clients.
Other blogs have fallen victim to the Zune comment spam, too, so we’re guessing that this is some sort of concerted effort on Microsoft’s part. Which seems a bit misguided to us–after all, given the Zune’s soft sales, you’d think that Microsoft would try and devote its resources to, say, actually getting people to pay for the things.
Comment Spam And Free Zunes [Digital Audio Insider]
i received an email about the promotion. seemed like a dull item, so i ignored it. the fact that it came from a guy with a hotmail account didn’t help its credibility. i googled the name on the account and came up with nothing, though i did see some tech blogs posted the item and credited it to the guy as if he was just a reader.
zune is having problems with sales, obviously, but the tactics of its hired marketers aren’t helping the product’s image. if mr. youth can’t even send out emails — with an email signature that denotes the company — from a proper email address, it might want to do its client a favor and reconsider using such a dumb ruse. seeding comment sections with its marketing ploys is even worse.
i don’t know if microsoft was aware of the marketing company’s tactics, but i hope it is now.
I can’t get over the fact that it exists in a shit brown color. Don’t that have test markets for this thing?
I tried using a Zune display model and I could not figure out how to work it for the life of me. I suppose I was expecting it to work like my gift from the gods, my iPod.
Why don’t they like dump these Zune’s in a third world country or something? Doesn’t Uganda need some James Blunt?
Someone from the Zune team left a comment to my original post, saying that the promo campaign was for MSN, not the Zune itself. I posted a follow-up here:
http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com/2007/02/msn-not-zu...
– David
an update–it’s actually msn’s marketers who are dopes, although their targeting of music blogs strikes me as a little, well, odd.
Making MSN your homepage in order to win a free Zune is like buying a Ford LandRover to win a free Betamax home video system.