Lawyers.com using girls in their underwear for marketing.
Last week I wrote a post called “I’m in my underwear and I use Findlaw (and Twitter)” about Findlaw using pictures of girls in their underwear on Twitter to drive traffic to Findlaw. It seems someone has made a business of using Twitter accounts with profile pictures of young girls in their underwear tweeting product endorsements. The concept is fairly simple: create an automated program that follows enough people on twitter to avoid the Twitter spam detectors, add a profile picture of a suggestive young girl and start tweeting links to paying clients. Enough people will have their eye caught by the inadequate bikini to read her tweet about being “layed off and they gave my job to some one else” and then click on the accompanying link. Sex and spam converge on the Internet’s next hot success, Twitter.
The salesman who sold Findlaw on the Twitter Spam concept apparently turned to Lawyers.com and scored his next sale. Check out the profile pictures of the young girls in the last 6 Twitter posts about Lawyers.com:
I promise the Avvo marketing staff will keep our clothes on. We’ll all be happier that way.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
[...] last season of Mad Men will recognize one of the Sterling Cooper ad campaigns when they click on Lawyer.com. Conrad Saam of AVVO thought these ads were attention-getting. [...]
August 24th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
“He refinanced without me . . . in my Maidenform Bra.”
Its been done. See my comment in Pittsburgh Legal Back Talk.
http://www.pittsburghlegalbacktalk.com/?p=304
Cliff Tuttle
August 25th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
the fact that the link points to lawyers.com does not mean that lawyers.com paid for the ad. it could be a red herring to help legitimize the porn site.
August 25th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Conrad and all,
LexisNexis and Lawyers.com do not engage in this type of marketing and I wanted to post a reply to clearly state to all that our company is not creating these messages – nor are we familiar with or affiliated with any company that is doing so.
We noticed that this same thing happened to the other major provider of legal marketing services last week and certainly we appreciate Conrad bringing it to our attention. We do find it curious that your company seems to find out about this before the companies that are the target of the spam but I’ll leave that aside for now.
My main message is that this does not come from Lawyers.com and certainly does not have any positive impact so we would never choose to do such a thing – now or in the future. We are looking into who may be doing this and will demand that they stop immediately.
thank you,
Dave Danielson
VP Small Law Client Development
LexisNexis
August 26th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Dave –
Thanks for your reply – it’s good to hear this isn’t coming from LexisNexis. At Avvo, we are really on top of social media, so we monitor it very closely – that’s how we picked up on the girls in the underwear story within a day of the campaign going live. I’d recommend setting up alerts on the major social media outlets (Tweetdeck is a really easy way to do real time monitoring of your brand). Alternatively you can use a third party service (try http://www.visibletechnologies.com) that specializes in monitoring social media. As far as the underwear campaign is concerned – we have some very good connections at Twitter, I’m more than happy to provide an introduction if you want. It may prove the most effective method for dealing with this.
-Conrad
August 26th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Conrad,
I appreciate your offer of people to talk to, thanks. We would really like to know. You have my email through the blog so if you could drop me a note with your number I’ll call you directly.
Also, we’re using a few techniques for social media monitoring but will definitely take a look at your link.
thanks again –
dave
===
Dave Danielson
VP Client Development
LexisNexis
August 26th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Conrad:
Since Lawyers.com did not originate the twitter ad, I’ll write a retraction in Pittsburgh Legal Back Talk. I didn’t try the link or I might have found out the truth. Sorry, Lawyers. com!
However, this hijacking of Lawyers.com’s good name looks like an interesting story in itself.
August 26th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
[...] Well, it turns out that Lawyers.com didn’t hire the Mad Men to put together a knockoff of the “I [fill in the blank] in my maidenform bra” advertising campaign after all. Somebody else, possibly a porno site, hijacked their good name. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here and here. [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Twitter is not merely status updates! Twitter is a place where you can advertise your brand or yourself in way to captivate and socially interact with your followers. Twitter, in essence, is about creating online relationships with your followers.
March 17th, 2010 at 11:49 am
People who aren’t utilizing twitter will have either not figure out the power of twitter or they might not be aware of its existence. with some research, you can get to know the positive and successful stories of twitter and their purpose in driving traffic towards your business