Wiki Marketing Fails: 7 Brands Who Messed With Wikipedia and Lived to Regret It
Every day, communications professionals make the mistake of taking the low road to achieving their goals on Wikipedia. Instead of following the established guidelines and rules for editors with a conflict of interest (COI), they go in and edit the article themselves, or worse, hire a firm that claims they can magically fix all your wiki problems for a premium fee.
Why You Should Hire an Agency to Work on Wikipedia
While Wikipedia is the encyclopedia "anyone can edit", if you have a conflict of interest—a paid or personal connection to an article subject—you should not edit that article. Instead, you're encouraged to participate by asking independent editors for help.
If you have a COI and don't follow the rules, more often than not, your changes get removed and you get a slap on the wrist from Wikipedia's editing community in the form of a warning at the top of the page. But sometimes, it lands you firmly in a hot seat facing the ire of the wider internet, and earns you a reputation that, like the edit history of your Wikipedia article, will never go away. Below is a list of some of the most infamous marketing fails on Wikipedia, foiled attempts to manipulate Wikipedia, and great examples of why you'll want an agency that understands Wikipedia's rules for brands.
Bell Pottinger
Undisclosed editing, neutrality, puffery, whitewashing
The year was 2011. It was a classic case of Wikipedia subterfuge, simply going in and editing their clients' articles. Anonymous accounts with absurd names like “Biggleswiki” replaced negative information in articles about Bell Pottinger’s clients with positive content. You don't have to read far into Wikipedia's entry on the now-defunct PR agency to see that undisclosed paid editing on the encyclopedia was far from the firm's most problematic practice. Nonetheless it serves as an early example of the potential fallout you face from attempting to undermine the site's content.
In this case, it even got them a stern talking-to by none other than Wikipedia’s famous co-founder, Jimmy Wales. Ultimately, Bell Pottinger admitted to what they did, noting (correctly but inadequately) that it wasn't illegal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the firm was not among those that joined Beutler Ink in pledging to take an ethical approach to Wikipedia in 2014. Three years later, they would be out of business. Coincidence?
Wiki-PR
Undisclosed editing, sock puppeting, whitewashing, source reliability
In 2022, nearly a decade after the firm gained infamy, Wiki-PR's story reads like a how-to-guide for anyone that wants to end up in the news for violating the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) terms of use. In fact, we have their infamy to thank in part for the WMF adding clear requirements to disclose financial conflicts of interest to their Terms of Use in 2014. Wiki-PR went beyond just going in and changing article content in their clients' favor or creating new articles. In addition, the firm worked to place articles in content farms, which it then used as citations in Wikipedia articles; and it claimed to have access to administrator accounts.
An investigation into their sockpuppetry—using multiple accounts to create an appearance of several editors—led to 250 user accounts being blocked, perhaps hundreds of entries being removed, and thousands of wasted hours for Wikipedia editors left to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, this sort of “black hat” editing is still rampant. It causes constant problems for those of us who care about the encyclopedia and work above-board to improve Wikipedia’s content and coverage of business topics, and tarnishes the reputation of the brands that hire them.
Gibraltarpedia
Content neutrality
In most of these examples, there was a clear intent to manipulate Wikipedia. The 2012 Gibraltarpedia incident, however, was not a clear case of subversion. Initially, Gibraltarpedia was a reiteration of the successful Monmouthpedia project, which placed QRcodes linked to Wikipedia articles about the people, places, and things around the town of Monmouth in Wales. That project successfully improved the town's coverage on Wikipedia, and the Government of Gibraltar sought to copy the model.
Things got sticky when the Wikipedia community learned that one of Wikimedia UK's trustees had taken a consultancy fee from the Government of Gibraltar for the project. They raised concerns about the project's neutrality and a potential conflict of interest with the Gibraltar tourism sector. The trustee in question ended up resigning over it. A decade later, it looks more than a little overblown. Either way, it wasn't Wikimedia's proudest moment.
Sometimes, it might seem like the Wikipedia editing community has it out for brands and individuals trying to influence their content on the site–and as we've shown, there's good reason why they are wary. But it really doesn't matter where the conflict comes from; their priority is maintaining neutral content.
Burger King
Guerilla marketing, undisclosed editing
If you ask Google's Alexa or Apple's Siri to explain almost anything, you're likely going to hear the computerized voice respond with some snippets found on Wikipedia. Burger King had the super-awesome idea to leverage this in 2017 by running an ad that would trigger smart speakers to read the Wikipedia article about the Whopper. As the ad was being released, promotional text was added to the article that described the Whopper as "America's favorite burger" and "100% beef with no preservatives". Initially, the ad worked as planned. After a few hours, though, the ad stopped triggering Alexa. A change The New York Times believes Google made. Burger King then re-released it with a new voiceover to get around the block.
But what really made this a problem, as smart speakers that heard the ad piped up to educate anyone within earshot about the Whopper, people began to vandalize the article with lines such as "the worst hamburger product" or adding cyanide to the list of ingredients. The moral of the story: the internet will not take kindly to efforts to market your brand on Wikipedia. Brands that are successful on Wikipedia follow the rules and show they're there to help improve the encyclopedia.
The North Face
Image manipulation, guerilla marketing, undisclosed editing
This one stands atop its own mountain in terms of marketing blunders involving Wikipedia. An agency working for The North Face Brazil went into Wikipedia articles about famous outdoor destinations and replaced photos with images of people at those locations wearing the company's gear.
Their thinking was that they'd found a secret passage to the top of Google's image results. And for a moment, they had! But what they really found was a blatant violation of Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use for paid editing that blew up in their faces after they made an ad about it, putting their transgression on public display and gloating about how they'd "hacked" Google by manipulating Wikipedia. They bragged about how it cost nothing, and even lied about it being a collaboration with Wikipedia. Wikimedia released a scathing response, the campaign was quickly canceled, and The North Face apologized.
All that remains now is a tarnished reputation among Wikipedians, and many news articles in the weeks after covering the incident. There are some things that just aren't possible on Wikipedia, and guerrilla marketing is one of them. Anyone who tells you they can add your boilerplate promotional copy to the site is lying, and there's no magic bullet or secret trick. No marketing on Wikipedia, full stop.
Philip Roth
Source requirements
Back in 2012, the famed novelist Philip Roth noticed the Wikipedia article on his 2000 novel The Human Stain contained what he considered an error about the real-world identity of his inspiration. After all, who else would know better than Philip Roth? Roth's initial attempt to correct the error was rebuffed by the Wikipedia editing community which noted he would need a secondary source to back up his claims–though they did acknowledge his authority on the subject.
Roth then took a novel approach–albeit one most of us who aren't famous novelists don't have access to–and published an open letter to Wikipedia in The New Yorker. The letter then counted as a secondary source for Roth's claims, and the article was updated with correct information about who inspired the tale. For some time thereafter, the topic remained in Roth’s biography. Since his passing, it has been (rightly) removed.
This case wasn't exactly a marketing fail as others on this list are, however it offers valuable insight into how hard it can be to deal with inaccurate information on Wikipedia. Luckily, if publishing a letter to Wikipedia in a major outlet isn't an option for you, there are other ways to work with the community to update an individual or brand's Wikipedia article and make sure it is accurate.
NYPD
Undisclosed editing, content neutrality, whitewashing
The first revelation that someone was using NYPD's servers to edit Wikipedia came in 2015. The editor, or editors, did not use a registered account, so their IP address was captured with each change they made. And that IP address just happened to be coming from 1 Police Plaza, NYPD’s headquarters. According to The Washington Post, the edits included changing the article about the killing of Eric Garner from saying "Garner raised both his arms in the air" to "Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke."
As the edits were occurring, a grand jury was deciding not to indict the officer involved in Garner's death. An editor using NYPD's servers also petitioned for the removal of the article on the shooting of Sean Bell. In 2020, the NYPD was caught editing Wikipedia again.
After the first incident, a Twitter user created a bot that tracks Wikipedia edits coming from the NYPD's servers. On July 8, it tweeted that the NYPD had just edited its own article. Daily Dot reported that this time an anonymous user on the NYPD's servers had changed that part of their article that says the NYPD has "extensive history of police brutality, misconduct, and corruption, as well as discrimination on the basis of race, religion and sexuality" to "The NYPD has an extensive history of reducing crime in the most diverse city in the country," along with adding other promotional material.
One word that comes to mind regarding the NYPD's attempts to manipulate Wikipedia is "abhorrent". Editors take an enormous amount of care when writing about sensitive topics, such as police killings of unarmed Black men. Even discussions about what to name these articles can run into tens of thousands of words. Although the editor's anonymity makes it difficult to know who made the edits beyond their being able to access the NYPD's servers, the blatant disregard for this process and insensitivity to the families of the victims is nonetheless shameful.
The truth is, if your Wikipedia article contains accurate history–even if it is negative–and it is well sourced, it's not going away. Editors are very sensitive to attempts to whitewash articles. And sometimes, the best path forward is to let the community do its thing and stay out of the conversation.
How can your brand be successful on Wikipedia?
At Beutler Ink, we're proud to be on the short list of firms that have never been blocked from editing Wikipedia, and it's no secret how we stay on that list–we don't directly edit articles, we write accurate neutral content, we take Wikipedia's conflict of interest editing rules seriously, and we engage the community responsibly and respectfully. In short, we support Wikipedia's mission, and that means our work on the platform tends to stick.
Yes, anyone can try their hand at making an edit request, but it takes a significant amount of expertise to understand how to navigate the nuances of Wikipedia, and that's what we help our clients with every day. Get in touch today and our Wikipedia experts will be glad to talk about what's possible for your page.