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'Seeking a manly man. I'm not lying' By Ma'ayan Cohen Tags: teens, viral marketing  Online chatters were in for a surprise in the last few days to find that chat-room "guests" calling themselves by provocative monickers were actually workers of the viral marketing company Teenk, which as its monicker suggests, targets teens. The provocatively-named chatters were diverting surfers by rather unorthodox means to a video clip on YouTube presenting the Coca-Cola program for its resort village at Achziv ("Coca-Cola Village"). In one example, during a chat on the Tapuz portal, one of the guests called herself "Seeking a manly man." A surfer who responded received an answer from her - "Want to do it, honey?" and a link - that sent him to the clip. Internet chats are online, real-time conversations between two or more surfers. "How are u honey," "Fine, how's the cat" - the speed of the chat determined only by how fast you can type, assuming the servers are working properly, of course. Typically chatters use truncated versions of words to speed up the process, such as "4" for "for", "2" for "to", "u" for you, and so on. Advertisement In another instance, also on a Tapuz chat, the chatter called herself (or himself, there's no way of knowing) "Hot for a serious relationship." This time the excuse for providing the link to the Coca-Cola Village was more original. A surfer who responded to "Hot for" was asked to give "her" online pictures a rank of 10: "I'm in an intense competition, please, you have to do this, I'm not lying". And there was the link to the resort clip. Teenk specializes in viral marketing to teens and employs about 5,000 kids whose job is to participate in campaigns - which means, distribute them among their peers, mainly over the Internet. Each kid, or "buzzer," working for Teenk is given a personal link with a number. If the Teenk buzzer sends you a link and you click on it, you aren't sent straight to the Coca-Cola resort site - you're actually sent to the domain thesecret.4days.co.il, which identifies the source (the buzzer number) and credits the kid. For every such click the buzzer gets a point , which translates into some sort of remuneration. Buzzer, by the way - originator of buzz.The domain thesecret.4days.co.il registered on the name of Ron Sadeh, co-CEO of Teenk. Now, the point is this: Teenk frowns on its employees posing as provocateurs, to put it politely, to lure innocent surfers into clicking on the link. They're supposed to convince their friends and peers more honestly. And, according to the company's rules, the buzzers are supposed to confine their activities to friends and peers through chats. They are not, repeat not, supposed to publish their personal links on forums, talkbacks (surfer responses to material published online) and social networks (such as Facebook). But if you search for the domain name thesecret.4days.co.il on Google, as of writing you'll get 480 results on such forums, talkbacks and social networks, even on forums in Chinese. Teenk insists that it forbids its employees to advertise on forums because of complaints in the past, but clearly somebody isn't following the rules. Classy clientele Teenk was established in 2005 by Yaniv Weizman and Ron Sadeh. Among its investors are Amos Tal-Shir and Yinon Landenberg, and it isn't confined to virally advertising the beachside Achziv resort. Its client list reads like a who's-who of the business world: ICQ, Pelephone, Discount Bank, Strauss, and the Central Bottling Company, better known as Coca-Cola Israel. Ron Sadeh explains that the company's instructions to the kids are crystal clear. "They can't advertise on forums, only recommend by friend to friend, mouth to ear. You have to remember, though, that 5,000 kids are working at this. Once every year or two we notice a kid doing something unethical and he's summoned for a chat" - not a virtual one this time. Then, he explains, the Teenk system gets rid of the miscreant. Teenk has been doing legitimate viral marketing for three years, says Sadeh, and it has been working ethically, morally, and legally for some of Israel's biggest brand names. Its kids are leaders in their social sphere, he says. "But when you're dealing with teens, one or two will deviate from the directives and standards. These kids, who might do things like masquerade, or advertise on forums in foreign countries, are thousands of a percent in each campaign. We take it into account, our clients take it into account." In short, he says, the deviants are the exception, not the rule, and being such a small percentage, are irrelevant. That said, Sadeh insists that Teenk deplores the phenomenon of teens passing themselves off as ladies of easy virtue or vendors of sexual content to gain clicks. The prohibition on such behavior appears in the company's articles of association, he says. When learning of the specific case of three kids engaging in that sort of thing, the company kicked them out and sent reminders of the rules to all its buzzers. "The bottom line is that Teenk's activity in recent years has created value at the level of sales and at the level of image for the brands with which we work," Sadeh argues. "It creates nearness and real dialogue between consumers, who are kids, and the brand." What about the forums in Chinese where the kids' links can be found - what value is there in such surfer traffic? "I don't know what you're talking about," Sadeh responds. "Our rules are clear - friend recommending to friend. If we catch somebody deviating from the rules, he's ousted from the system. We take a certain percentage of deviation into account. We filter and the other results are real. We are proud of our work." So, possibly, is the buzzer Seeking a manly man. Coca-Cola Israel commented that it was patently obvious that it had no connection with salubrious content. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Terrorist donuts U.S. Arabs irate over criticism of celebrity cook's kaffiyeh. All the way to hell Rosner's blog: It's Obama's good intentions that pro-Israel activists fear.

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