Project: Canadian Club – Your Mom Had Groupies Spreads Across the Internet

It always amazes me how far and wide things can spread across the Internet in a small amount of time. I’ve been trying to track the progress of my project through pingbacks and comments, although sometimes it’s not entirely clear how people have found me. Certainly nothing I’ve ever written has garnered as much interest before.

This is how it’s gone so far:

1. After I posted the initial entry there were some responses from the Livejournal community, where the project was also posted, and by fandom related people who probably saw the ad campaign on Trancer’s journal. This got the attention of Rebecca Tushnet , which got the attention of Laura Quilter at Derivative Work.

2. After the post was up, I decided to go looking for other critiques of the Canadian Club ad campaign. I found one on Shameless Magazine’s blog, which I commented on with a link back to my project. Shameless, in turn, posted an entry on the faux ad campaign. This drew the attention of Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious, who asked if she could reprint my post.

3. My post then appeared at Racialicious, prompting two new ads. “Your Asian Wasn’t Quiet” was first posted at Resist Racism and then again at Racialicious.

4. This got the attention of a lot of people, including the f-word all the way in the UK. Awesome! Between Racialicious and The F-Word, the project has spread even further, getting mentions at Faux Real, Mental Hygiene, and Noli Irritare Leones, as well as suggestions for new ad campaigns from a number of people who find Photoshop confusing (who doesn’t?).

5. Finally, and most importantly, today I got an email from a woman at Beam Global, the company that owns Canadian Club. She wants to talk to me about the fake ads. This could be either really good or really, really bad. That’s to be determined I guess. Until I hear back from her I shall nervously eat leftover Thai food and squeak a lot.