[Foundation-l] advertising craigslist

[geni]

2009/12/15 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> Just as a bit of general background for this thread:
>
> The Craig Newmark banner is currently running at 20% on the English
> Wikipedia. It's a pilot to see how our audience responds to
> endorsements and testimonials by third parties. (So far, it is doing
> reasonably well, but not fantastically so; we will likely move on to
> different messages soon.) We're not running a large endorsement
> campaign this year, but we wanted to at least get some data on a
> banner of this type to help us determine whether we want to run more
> such messages in the future.
>
> We approached Craig and asked him whether he would help us with this,
> and he generously agreed. We chose Craig because he represents, to
> many people, a philosophy of the web that is comparable to ours. In
> spite of huge web traffic, Craigslist is run with a staff of 32 and
> carries no ads, and Craig founded a non-profit organization, the
> Craigslist Foundation, to support other non-profits. (CraigsList
> itself is a for-profit.) We're pleased that Craig has joined our
> Advisory Board, and we're happy he agreed to this endorsement.  That
> said, any kind of personal endorsement can certainly polarize.

I'm aware of Craigslist's PR image there is no need to repeat it.  If
you wanted to test endorsements there is no shortage of worthies who
could provide one without needing an advert for their website
appearing on several million page views. Heck if all else failed you
could have dug out those UNESCO contacts we've picked up.

You are helping  Craigslist carry out classic Edward Bernays
propaganda/PR and they are not even having to pay you. I mean yes I'm
quite impressed that Craigslist managed to pull that one off but there
was no need you you to make it so easy for them.

-- 
geni