WikiMcPedia.
I can’t be the first to think of this, but in the nothing-is-sacred world of commerce – this Bible brought to you by McDonald’s and why not try our new Happy Clappy Meal including two loaves, a filet-o-fish and regular fries – Wikipedia should surely be open season for the insidious and brightly coloured tentacles of marketeers. The whole site’s just begging for some serious product placement. Who cares about paying a million for Will Smith to wear your trainers as he fires hot lead into the faces of a thousand baddies when you could get a picture of your sweatshop’s finest output in front of everyone who searches for the history of footwear on the world’s favourite made-up internet encyclopedia.
You’d have to be a bit subtle though, which is not always the advertising industry’s strong point. I’m not talking about slapping a big can of Stella in the lager entry; that’s so obvious it’d be ripped down by the community in the time it takes to drink twelve of the aforementioned cans, start a fight, and copiously vomit kebab-meat down your shirt. I’m not even talking about a history professor sneakily adding his own book into the ‘Further reading’ appendix on the Battle of Agincourt.
For example, take a look at the ‘Battery‘ entry. That’s just itching for a good quality cutaway diagram of a domestic battery. Now, there wouldn’t be any suggestion of a logo or a brand name but, should the battery in that drawing just happen to be coloured black at the bottom and copper at the top like a certain well-known make, there’s arguably at the very least a low-level psychological tweak going to happen.
Some products are easier than others - Guinness and St Patrick’s Day are already intertwined so it’s easy to get away with mentioning the black stuff in the relevant entry. But did you know that in Japan, Kentucky Fried Chicken is associated with Christmas, to the extent that some families apparently make advance reservations to guarantee their bucket of miscellaneous bird bits? I’m sure there’s someone at chicken-central with the responsibility to ensure that particular nugget of information doesn’t get removed from KFC’s Wikipedia entry.
Sport is an easy one - have a look at how detailed the equipment lists are for the top tennis players. I’d be surprised if those weren’t carefully massaged by marketing departments. But they’re missing a trick on the generic sport pages; an artfully not-too-professional-looking photo of an attractive sportsperson clad in Nike might well slip through the net to influence those looking up their chosen activity.
There’s opportunity for some carefully orchestrated and underhand counter-marketing too. Car manufacturers - is your competitor’s well-built but ugly car selling rather more than you’d hoped? How about uploading a picture of that car on their entry, making sure that your own better-looking smug-wagon is clearly visible in the background for comparison. Fashion labels could dig out photos of their rivals’ occasional disastrous mistakes to sabotage the relevant pages. It’d be like the effect Jeremy Clarkson had on the sales of denim.
Eventually the situation will degenerate into a cold war of marketing, as PR firms retain a host of scattered agents to perform surgical strikes of secretly inserted information which conspire to promote ally companies and undermine the opposition. Or maybe that hidden conflict is already upon us and there’s a reason why Wikipedia’s Renault page is stuffed full of terrible pictures of ugly cars or that the handbag/purse entry is headed up by Burberry.