The Next Hot Marketing Ploy? Find a Way to Get Sued!

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 by Andy Beal

The Next Hot Marketing Ploy? Find a Way to Get Sued!

Forget search marketing, viral marketing or even social marketing, there’s a faster way to get your company in the spotlight – get sued by a bigger company.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at all the publicity that social network Imeem is now getting, thanks to a law suit slapped on them by Warner Music.

The suit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims that “Imeem is no innocent infringer. It invites Imeem’s millions of users to flock to its website to copy, adapt, distribute and perform unlicensed sound recordings and music videos.” A statement from Imeem was not yet available.

It’s the ultimate linkbait! Encourage your users to upload copyrighted content – if they upload it, you’ll have a better chance of a) hiding behind safe harbor provisions and b) keeping the support of your community, while you get you get the pants sued off of you.

After a few days of publicity, simply come to a settlement with the claimant – preferably one that ends with some kind of distribution deal – and then seek some additional venture capital.

Piece of cake!

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

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19 comments on “The Next Hot Marketing Ploy? Find a Way to Get Sued!”

Jeremy Luebke Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

Why even get sued when you can pretend to get sued? Have a 3rd party (wink) do a press release stating a fortune 100 company is suing your website for some ungodly sum. Wait for the press to come around and keep your yap shut. Then after a few days speak out and say you don’t know anything about a suit.

Hoax marketing at it’s finest.
Forget About Marketing: Why You Want To Be Sued Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 2:18 pm

[...] Worth exploring – Andy Beal comments on "The Next Hot Marketing Ploy…" Technorati Tags: DRM, Marketing 20 Web 20, Social Media [...]
Jeffrey Eisenberg Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Great post!
Jennifer Laycock Says:

May 16th, 2007 at 2:56 pm

Umm…duh!

Worked wonders for me. 1200 links in a week? Traffic that quintuppled? Shirt sales up 1000%?

If it wasn’t so tiring, I’d be out trying to find a way to get the beef council mad at me.
Nate Moller Says:

May 17th, 2007 at 2:11 am

Great new marketing technique, or is this new? O.J. tried something like this with a book he tried to get out to market a few months back – didn’t work too well for him though – wonder why?
5 top link building tips from the vault | Distilled blog Says:

July 2nd, 2007 at 6:24 pm

[...] Thirdly, Andy Beal for this post on how to get sued for links. [...]
damian Says:

July 3rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm

i’m about to get sued and i’m looking for a little support. information about it all will be going up on my site tomorrow. or maybe later tonight
Hoping to get sued by Coca Cola at Drinks Blog Says:

August 3rd, 2007 at 5:09 pm

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November 14th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

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