In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist's desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams.
The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as This Man.
7 comment(s):
Interesting idea, but a quick whois.org search reveals that this might be just a viral/guerrilla marketing campaign.
I'm with jervo on this.
My first thought was wow, cool! which was instantly followed by a wait a second! This has to be a gimmick.
A clever gimick.
It's obviously a hoax! Why isn't, for instance, the name of the "well-known psychiatrist" mentioned on the website?
Maybe they all watched those old televangelist shows. Looks like Jim Bakker to me. :p
Oh this guy is a real psychiatrist. Infact, it's this “psychiatrist” that registered the website. His name is Andrea Natella and he is a “sociologist specializing in marketing”. For all you Italians, he also wrote quite the article on the “The origins of the subversive use of the hoax in Italy” (2006, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-07-31-natella-fr.html ). The founder of Guerrilla Marketing ( http://GuerrigliaMarketing.it ), Andrea Wrote on defined his technique as “a set of non-conventional communication techniques that achieves maximum visibility with minimum investment” rendered effective by using “memetic virus can replicate itself in the minds of consumers”. Andrea's site, ThisMan.org, seems to be the proof-of-concept for his marketing theory. What is unclear is how “This Man” is relevant to any product known to man. Curiously, the site is displayed in English, rather than his native language of Italian. Although I would suspect that a proof-of-concept test of his marketing efforts would occur in plain view of his target market for clients (Italy), it seems a at the very least a bit odd that there would be any profit in this, especially since it targets a demographic of diminished prevalence in many parts of Europe (English speakers). However, I must add that Gerald Vlemmings is a perfect example of an exception to this rule, but of all people, a marketing expert knows not to market something written in Chinese to Americans. Prior to Andrea's registration of the domain, the address was owned by a group called Galaxie Media, but I have yet to do any research on this particular group. It will be very interesting to see where this site goes in the future.
Sources and Suggested Reading:
Internet Archive
[http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/thisman.org/]
mediaelites
[http://assme.org/2009/10/12/thisman-org-is-probably-viral-marketing-so-shut-up-and-quit-freaking-out-about-him/]
eurozine
[http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-07-31-natella-fr.html]
DomainTools
[http://whois.domaintools.com/thisman.org]
Guerrilla Marketing
Translated:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it/&sl=it&tl=en&history_state0=]
Italian:
[http://GuerrigliaMarketing.it]
Yep JW is right. Guerrilla marketing hoax. This is what we were able to find out at Jawbone.tv:
http://www.jawbone.tv/featured/2-featured/260-ever-dream-this-man-urban-myth-viral-hoax-or-terrifying-boogeyman.html
cool idea for marketing!
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