Saatchi Web Site Being Used by Rival Agency Asabailey

(MoneyWatch)  Saatchi & Saatchi failed to secure a URL to its own name and the site is being used by Asabailey Viral Advertising, a London based viral marketing shop.

The site, saatchiandsaatchi.co.uk, now features a video promoting Asabailey along with the message "You've Been Hacked." At the bottom is this message, directed at Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts:

Dear Mr Roberts and the gang, sorry about this, we hope you accept our apology and understand our mash up, hacker viral methods for reaching into the hearts and minds of your young creatives, we mean no disrespect, and we love the T-Mobile work :) - ok we'll get our nose out your ass now and hope you'll let this one slide, Gulp!

Saatchi's page is at saatchi.co.uk. Usually, companies buy up all the relevant variants on their name to stop this sort of thing from happening. Lawyers' letters are doubtless being exchanged at this moment. When asked about it, shop chief Asa Bailey sent this email:

... no contact from them as of yet. Although I have traced the visitor IP addresses on the site and there has been plenty of Publicis Groupe visitor activity, so they sure know about it. The other users all seem to be from the ad industry too, usual suspects, with all the top agencies showing up in the server log stats. Which was the whole point of the campaign ?€" to get awareness within the ad industry of our company... It's what you may call a highly target viral idea.

But I'm hoping that "saatchi" get our rather "viral" attitude and leave us alone, and join us in laughing it off ;) that would be the best thing they could do, and it would show that they "get it" better than if they tried to close it down.

Perhaps -- but I somehow doubt Saatchi will let this mocking of their intellectual property stand. Roberts frequently describes Saatchi as the most famous brand in advertising. He's not about to let some cheeky upstart dilute it.

Hat tip to Adrants.