The North Face seeks to trick Wikipedia to top Google search results without losing money

The North Face, one of the most famous global brands in manufacturing apparel, shoes and accessories. In an advertising campaign in collaboration with Leo Burnett Tailor Made, the fashion company replaced Wikipedia photos with photos of its products. This trick helped The North Face to top the search results list of Google Images at no cost.

In a video, the company explained to its viewers its tricks. Specifically, every trip begins with a search on destination on Google, the first image that appears in the list of search results comes from an article on Wikipedia. Based on this, The North Face decided to take photos of models wearing its products in popular tourist destinations like Guarita State Park in Brazil and Huayna Picchu in Peru. They then used Photoshop to insert a The North Face product into an existing picture on Wikipedia or even swap their photos with the original image of this open encyclopedia page.

The promotional video of The North Face.

In the video, The North Face also boasted about how they hacked results to get their products into Google Search. According to The North Face, they only need to cooperate with Wikipedia and not pay at all.

But the action of The North Face is not considered cooperative, because it aims to make money and this violates Wikipedia's terms of service.

Wikipedia editors only discovered this when The North Face's advertising campaign was ripped off by Ad Age websit. Immediately, Wikipedia reports user accounts that violate the statute and remove most of the advertising photos for The North Face products.

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According to Ad Age, the negative reaction from the public to this advertising campaign was anticipated by Leo Burnett Tailor Made. Even being peeled off is a trap of The North Face to help the name of the company float.