Zipatoni is an American marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 company that provides clients "zany" and "off-beat" marketing services, mainly through buzz marketing or viral marketing

Viral marketing

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...

.
It was founded in 1985 by Jack Thorwegen. Mr. Thorwegen went back to Harvard to finish his doctorate in quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

. He is currently consulting for the Defense Department

United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

. Zipatoni was acquired by the Interpublic Group of Companies

Interpublic Group of Companies

The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. is one of the "big four" global advertising holding companies . Headquartered in New York City, it has 41,000 employees and reported full−year revenues of US$6.5 billion for 2010...

 in 2007.

Zipatoni currently has 1160 employees. Its headquarters is in St. Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

, with offices in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 and San Francisco and satellite offices in Philadelphia and New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. It represents numerous brands, including Jim Beam

Jim Beam

Jim Beam is a brand of bourbon whiskey produced in Clermont, Kentucky. It is currently one of the best selling brands of bourbon in the world. Since 1795 , seven generations of the Beam family have been involved in whiskey production for the company that produces the brand, which was given the name...

 bourbon

Bourbon whiskey

Bourbon is a type of American whiskey – a barrel-aged distilled spirit made primarily from corn. The name of the spirit derives from its historical association with an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky . It has been produced since the 18th century...

, AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

 and Levi Strauss & Co.

Levi Strauss & Co.

Levi Strauss & Co. is a privately held American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came from Buttenheim, Franconia, to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business...

's Levi's brand.

Viral marketing controversy

In late 2006, Zipatoni produced an online viral campaign known as "All I want for Christmas is a PSP

PlayStation Portable

The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...

", for Sony Computer Entertainment America, the makers of the PlayStation platforms, that combined supposedly amateur videos with a blog supposedly written by a friend of the characters in the videos, written in mock leet

Leet

Leet , also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters...

-speak, stating:

"we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp! consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss - whoever - so they know what you really want."

When both the videos and the blog were discovered to have been created by the company as part of an advertising campaign, there was widespread criticism of the campaign on the Internet.
The campaign was poorly received by the gaming community, and criticized in the press as being counter-productive.

External links

• ZIPATONI.com http://www.zipatoni.com/
• A mirror of the now removed blog http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/sonylieblog/default.aspx.htm