Getting burned by Computer Tan
By Nicole Kobie in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
I almost don’t want to write this, as I hate to further spread such a stupid PR stunt, but here goes. You may have noticed some rather ridiculous ads over the past weeks, advertising a new service which would let you tan over a computer. The posters and even commercials on the new-fangled projectors on the London tube directed people to a Computer Tan website.
Now, I’m pretty sure most people were fully aware that computers don’t tan their users; anyone who works in an office in the UK can attest to the vampiric pale skin of their desk-bound colleagues.
And I’m pretty sure most people are aware that the sun does tan you; consider the word “suntan”. It’s pretty blindingly obvious.
But the charity behind the hoax, if you can even call it that, is now claiming a million people have visited the site over the past two-ish months, showing they were fooled by this ingenious trick and clearly have no idea how the sun or computers work.
Their PR folks said: “The fact that so many people fell for the ComputerTan hoax demonstrates the frightening truth that getting a tan – regardless of the risk – is still appealing for many people.”
Uh no.
First, visiting the site doesn’t mean people bought the hoax. It means they went “huh?” and checked it out to see what the hell was going on. This isn’t a bad thing. This is curiosity and fact checking. Indeed, most people likely realised it was a viral ad campaign, as these are hardly rare these days now that PR has discovered the interwebs, and wanted to see what it was for. If I click something, it doesn’t mean I believe it or want it or like it. A lot of Republicans probably read Obama’s sites, right?
Second, the charity behind this (Skcin) has been pushing “How Computer Tan hoaxed the nation” since the beginning of February. I got sent a press release for the site — they tried to hoax us tech journos, too, you see — as well as a follow up one from Skcin on 3 February. I’m not sure why it’s getting attention now — someone finally gave in, or the number of ‘hoaxed’ got too big to ignore.
I’m all for finding creative ways to engage people about their health to prevent diseases like cancer. So Skcin gets automatic good karma points for that one. They mean well, and it’s a good, worthy cause. But do you really have to treat us like we’re all idiots?
But if anyone actually thought a screen could give them a tan, it shows more about their lack of knowledge of how monitors work than it does knowledge of skin care.
Rather than try to drive people to a website by making insane claims which complicate the issue for those dense enough to not understand it, maybe all those fancy ads would be better served sharing the frightening stats about skin cancer straight up, instead of being all Web 2.0 too-clever-by-half about it.
Rated: 80% (8 votes)
Loading ...Comment by - March 30, 2009 on 11:55 am
Hey Nicole, you make a really valid point here. Its a shame they haven’t actually done anything to educate people on the dangers of skin cancer. Its a pretty insensitive stunt and is the kind of low brow junk that gives PR a bad name.
Nice post though,
The Office Vampire 
Pingback by - March 30, 2009 on 12:08 pm
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Comment by rw - March 30, 2009 on 12:35 pm
Yes! Very good article!
I love articles that employ decent logic!!!
Comment by Reader - March 31, 2009 on 7:29 am
Skcin should be ashamed of itself for announcing that so many people were “fooled”. It’s just another nail in the coffin for the believability of charity press releases.
They’re not only shooting themselves in the foot, their shooting other charities with genuine statistics straight in the head.
I’d bet that maybe 95% of the people who actually visted that site just did it because they wanted to see what it was advertizing, not because they beleived that they’d get a tan. And that spare 5%, well, they were probably just drunk and looking for porn.
Comment by Hilarious - March 31, 2009 on 9:08 am
Lighten up! It’s not the Apocalypse, it’s only a not a very successful attempt to get attention. . A short face-saving funny statement and a link to the charity’s site would have been more productive and might have kept the po-faced amongst us a bit quieter.
Comment by Steve - March 31, 2009 on 10:07 am
They are pretending to trick people on purpose, even though they know it’s not the case.
Why? Well the ad worked, didn’t it?
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