In case you were wondering what the entire fuzz was about with the wacky billboards that appeared in half a dozen of cities around the US, here’s an article from the New York Times that explains it all.
Excerpt:
[...]Another “source” sent an e-mail to Gawker suggesting that Court TV was behind the signs, pointing out that it was a viral marketing campaign to promote one of its programs. Mystery solved.
The bad news for viral marketers who use these kind of devices: executives at Court TV said they did not really want to be discovered so quickly. The good news is that even after the ruse was discovered, people visited the Emily blog, pushing it to one million hits by the end of Thursday. [...]
“Emily is really an amalgam of all of us who have been cheated on,” said Marc Juris, general manager for programming and marketing at Court TV. “Clearly, this really resonated with people.”
Whether it resonates into higher ratings for “Parco P.I.” is another matter. The “Emily” ruse was originally intended to be a stunt to help promote the start of the show’s new season on Aug. 15, but Court TV’s marketing group liked the idea so much that they made it a large part of the campaign. [...]
Mr. Juris was still marveling: “It’s like a flash investigation took place, and within 24 hours we were busted.”