In an attempt to push the limits of promotional creativity, the team behind a crypto-based mobile game has devised a plan to create forge a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article that covers the alleged news that the CEO of Doginhood has been detained in Changi Airport, Singapore for attempting to smuggle 20,000 condoms into the country.
Doginhood is another click game on Telegram messaging app that offers little gameplay beyond mashing the screen to earn in-game currency.
A screenshot of the "WSJ article" on the project's X account on Saturday, reporting that the project's CEO had been arrested by Singaporean customs officer at 4pm SGT and " is currently being held in custody."
It went on to claim that, "Authorities believe the condoms were for a crypto conference in the city-state this week."
Doginhood said, "We already reached out to our legal team and our contacts in Singapore trying to solve the situation."
While the image shared on X features a blurred out logo that greatly resembles a particular renowned publication, but some pointed out that the fake headline wasn't capitalized in the standard WSJ style. WSJ also hasn't published any stories on their websites or social media about any crypto founders who were caught smuggling condoms into Singapore.
Despite all the skepticism of this article, there are other X users who seem to believe that that story is real, citing the Singaporean law on condom imports.
But Doginhood's attempts to gain exposure for their project have kind of worked. In just a few days, the social post on the article has gathered more than 118.4k views, almost three times the amount of its previous posts, which has a measly 30k views.
One day after the publication of the social media post, the price of Doginhood also shot up to nearly 0.000040, before dropping down again. Regardless, the price of Doginhood still gained since it leaked the fake article.
Doginhood isn't the first project to have deployed this method of publicity. Another crypto project, NEAR protocol, also opted for a similar tactic when it claimed it had been hacked earlier this month. But it was later found out that the claims of a cyber attack story were just to hype its upcoming Hackathon event.
The project was later flooded by messages from netizens who criticized such deceptive methods of gaining publicity. One user wrote that faking being hacked isn't creative or smart. Its plain silly!
So can we really say that any publicity is still good publicity?
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also joined the joke, responding to a satirical post on X that claimed Solend’s founder had been arrested in Singapore for smuggling condoms. Hoskinson jokingly remarked that the founder probably wanted to “safely” use Solana’s blockchain. This quip was a pointed one, given Solana's well-known struggles with bugs and network outages, making it an easy target for his humor.
It seems crypto projects are getting more and more creative with the way they are marketing their brands, with the use of bolder and more unconventional methods of achieving their motives. But whether these stunts are landing well with the community is a very different story entirely.
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Cointelegraph