Prompt's TechBlog

For all the hype around the power and influence of participatory media, it's still rare for a social media site to break a news story.

Most blogs simply replicate or amplify stories from traditional media organisations, which, after all, employ teams of professional reporters to make sure they get the news first.

So it was interesting to see the Guardian today bringing to a conclusion a story that broke on a couple of online community websites before Christmas. It's the David-and-Goliath tale of an unsigned London ska band, a far-flung advertising agency, the world's biggest consumer brand, and a cavalcade of dancing ninja kittens.

The band is 7 Seconds of Love, whose singer is Joel Veitch, a web animator with a cute animal fixation and a fanatical online following. Veitch's fanbase extends as far as Argentina, which is how the singer came to hear of an Argentinian television advert for Coca-Cola that bore an uncanny resemblance to the video for his band's song 'Ninja'.

Not only did the ad echo Veitch's distinctive animation style, but it also used a backing track that was strangely similar to 7 Seconds of Love's own song.

Fans rallied round the band, voicing their disapproval on Veitch's own website, rathergood.com, and on b3ta.com, an online community site for amateur web animators. Before long, the story had radiated across a good number of blogs, too, such that a Google search for "joel veitch" and "coke" still returns six blog entries in the first 10 results.

Buoyed by its fans' response, the band threatened Coke with legal action - at which point the story broke through to the mainstream media and was picked up by the BBC, The Times and Channel Four News among others.

The Guardian reports today that the soft drinks behemoth has now settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which the band will mostly donate to charity, using the rest to promote a new EP.

It's unclear where this leaves the agency responsible for the ad, Santo Buenos Aires, but I'll bet that Coke isn't *too* unhappy about one of its ads gaining worldwide notoriety, so Santo will probably live to see another Coke campaign. Everyone's a winner!


tags: coca-cola | plagiarism | ninja kittens