Anilrgowda

Surreptitious marketing campaign draws ire of gaming community, site updates with admission of shenanigans. Last month, a Web site debuted called All I Want for Xmas is a PSP, supposedly established as an effort by two friends--Charlie and Jeremy--to get Jeremy's parents to buy him a PlayStation Portable for Christmas. The site included PSP-centric greeting cards, T-shirt iron-on patterns to print out, YouTube videos featuring songs about the system, and an abundance of Internet and street slang, some of it improperly used.
The site went largely unnoticed until this week, when someone on the Something Awful forums (warning: foul language) started a thread about it, pointing out the quality of graphic design on some of the site's offerings, attractive T-shirt models, and use of Sony terminology like "PSP Entertainment Pack" to describe the system.
Within minutes, it was determined that the site had been registered by Zipatoni, a marketing firm that touts "interruptive buzz marketing" among its specialties, and counts Sony among its clients. Word of the campaign quickly spread and the site's comments sections were bombarded with words from angry visitors. Today the site's owners pulled the YouTube videos and a posting with a $249 bill printout (just the right amount to buy a PSP Entertainment Pack), killed the comments sections and admitted the site had been a sham.
In an update attributed to Sony Computer Entertainment America, the following message was posted:
"Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP."