Wife’s new and old media revenge

I often tell clients that an effective way to drive traffic to your new media offerings is to use tried and trusted old media such as media relations, advertising and direct mail.

That might be why a scorned wife used a £2,500 billboard advert to expose her husband’s affair with her best friend.

To my ‘dear husband Mark’ and ‘my best friend Shelley’,

You are the most despicable, deceitful people I have ever met. I know what you did and I’m disgusted.

I’ve changed the locks Mark, burnt your clothes and emptied OUR joint account – to pay for this poster.

You deserve each other.

The billboard is in Birmingham city centre and within hours of it appearing the MySpace site was inundated with supportive comments. Interestingly the first MySpace friend listed is BRMB’s Elliott and Caroline.

However, BRMB’s involvement might mean that this is not all that it seems. The station is accomplished at creating controversial publicity for itself, such as its ‘Two strangers and a wedding’ stunts. 


4 Replies to “Wife’s new and old media revenge

  1. That looks suspiciously like a rerun of the US "Emily" adverts that were tied to a Blogger blog by the name of thatgirlemily, and were advertising a Court TV series about a private detective.

    I wonder if the same series is coming to the UK – or at least something similar?

  2. It's working though. I thought the TGE original was utterly transparent and consider this one insult piled upon injury, but if you look at how people are responding online most seem to buy it. The agency obviously figured their audience wasn't savvy enough to spot this as a second-hand stunt, and from where I'm sitting their audience has proved them right. Depressing as it is to say it.

  3. Depressing indeed. What next, geriatric1927 is actually a stooge for Stannah Stairlifts?

    Something like that would really break my heart.

    Back to this 'campaign', if it is one. A single billboard generating this much interest is great for the companies concerned in cost respects. But I do think that a backlash to being manipulated through social media is very clearly already happening. Everyone, ultimately, hates to be cheated. If it's clever, then people play along, because they want to be associated with 'clever'. But you can cheat people *once*. Try it again and you're the scum of the earth.

Comments are closed.