Proving you can market just about anything, even if it doesn’t exist, one journo’s story of how he fooled TripAdvisor is doing the rounds on social media.
VICE’s Oobah Butler recently conducted a hilarious experiment involving the travel and restaurant website, whereby he used a barrage of fake reviews to get his ‘restaurant’ The Shed at Dulwich to the number one spot on TripAdvisor in the UK.
However, there was a catch: the restaurant didn’t even exist.
Over the course of eight months, Butler’s fake restaurant gradually climbed TripAdvisor’s rankings to the point where his phone was ringing off the hook, with people wanting to book a table, PR agencies wanting to represent him, and TV crews pitching shows.
And to Butler’s amazement, The Shed at Dulwich reached the number one ranking, meaning there was only one thing left to do: open the doors of the restaurant for one night only.
Check out the journo’s hilarious journey below:
