I was naturally excited* to read on O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony blog that "a new site has popped up devoted to the promotion of Pherotones, which are presented as a sort of oddball, audible cousin of pheromones, which naturally you'll be able to use as ring tones on your cell phone. The site lures us in with the convincing tagline 'You've heard of Pheromones, now try Pherotones!' and gripping personal testimonials." The post's author even talked to " Dr Myra Vanderhood of the Auditory Institute, RTP, a 'world-traveled intimacy expert'."
However, these "subliminal sounds" were soon exposed, in a comment to the post, as "a viral marketing campaign created by the advertising agency McKinney Silver," which helpfully did little to cover its tracks.
One interesting thing about its campaign was the creation of a Wikipedia entry for Pherotone, which now carries the warning: "The factual accuracy of this article is disputed."
I don't know if this is the first attempt to use Wikipedia for such purposes, but I bet it won't be the last....
* My first thought being: "Here's one for the Bad Science column."
