The agency is called Dandelion, of course, because why let someone else run off with your awesome viral marketing analogy? And Dandelion is not a vulgar "ad" agency; rather, it is a "brand storyteller." For reals. All your favorites are lining up for some of that sweet marketing budget pie:

To help accomplish that, Dandelion is signing writers for projects that will integrate brands into the plot lines of stories. Ed Herbstman, who has written for Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show,” will be the head writer.

Among the other writers are Eric Gilliland, of sitcoms like “My Boys,” “Roseanne” and “That ’70s Show”; Scott Sherman of The Onion and the parody “The Dangerous Book for Dogs”; and Charlie Todd, the creator of a roving band of pranksters, Improv Everywhere, perhaps best known for the annual “No Pants” ride on the New York City subway.

Next up for Improv Everywhere: "No Pants Except Dockers™ Iconic Ranger Khaki."[NYT; pic via IE]

An agency called General Projects launched a site called Schtock.com that basically shows cut little mashups of stock photos. Everybody assumed it was a viral campaign for Corbis, the stock photo company. But actually GP did it on their own, and then took all the attention it generated and went to Corbis like, Hey, hire us, we can get you attention like this! So far Corbis hasn't done it. [via Adrants]

So, waste of time, right? Unless you consider pics like these art, in which case, good job of making internet art. Ultimately the agency probably will get business off this clever stunt, but let's hope the idea doesn't spread. We have enough viral shit as it is without people doing it on spec:

The internet is the most meritocratic communications medium invented yet. The bar to entry is low—basic internet skills and the cost of an internet hookup. Distribution is immediate and global. And, as many large corporations have learned, putting absurd amounts of money behind a web project is no guarantee of success.

What is guaranteed is that, in the long run, quality things on the internet will become popular. Take our own stories, for example. Sure, we can promote them to a certain extent on Digg, and put them on the top deck. But if they're not engaging enough they're never going to take off. On the other hand, lots of things we toss up and then forget about catch on all by themselves.

Quality is the common denominator for things that become popular. The hard part is determining what "quality" means online. If I knew, I would be a rich man, like Richard Blakeley. Sometimes, the big hits are very random. But they rarely are the product of a deliberate attempt to game the system; they usually happen organically.

Which is a long way of saying to advertisers: stop making "viral" ads and just make good ads.

The producer of the film, Darren Goldberg (pictured above), and/or his associates would have left two distinct props from his movie on beaches near Montauk. Some honest people came across these props and were fooled into thinking they were corpses. The first to surface was, as has been reported, photographed by the sister of a friend of publicist Alanna Nevitski, who forwarded the picture to Jezebel, which forwarded the picture to Gawker, which published it to mass hysteria.

Another picture, appearing less decomposed, was taken earlier in the day by Ryan O'Shea and Christina Pampalone and appeared in Newsday, which also reported tips from readers who had see the monster all over Long Island. It was later noted that, given the timing reported by Newsday, the body seemed to decompose awfully quickly over the course of one day. The paper also reported a sighting of a live version of the monster, which would have, under the hoax scenario, been made as part of the prank.

A group of three women later appeared on Plum TV to talk about discovering the monster and taking the photo that appeared on Gawker. One of the women was Rachel Goldberg, not identified at the time as the sister of Darren Goldberg, who is making the carnie movie, Splinterheads. The women insisted the creature "exists" and was not a Photoshop creation, and claimed they were looking for a scientist to study what remained of it. This seemed to jibe with what Colin Davis and their other male friends said on CNN. Both groups of friends would have been working in conjunction with the movie producer at this point to keep the hoax going. They claimed the body had already decomponsed to a bones and "goo," which they were keeping in a bag. One of the group later said, quite suspiciously, that the remains had been stolen.

The original supplier of the photo, Nevitski, told New York that Goldberg and the other women on Plum TV were "full of shit" because Nevitski's friend, still anonymous, took the original picture. If the monster was a hoax, Goldberg would have seen the interview as a golden opportunity to inflate the hoax further by appearing on TV, but needed to lie about taking that specific picture in order to get in front of the camers. Nevitski's friend was refusing interviews. When she went on, Goldberg suddenly had a new, alternate picture of the monster, indicating she had her own, original photos.

Blogger Nicky Papers also thought the women were lying, and wrote on Montauk-Monster.com about their nervous ticks, like giggling and breaking eye contact. He also noticed that Goldberg talked first and her friends followed her lead.

The blogger was then contacted by a source who claimed Rachel Goldberg was related to Darren Goldberg. The source said Goldberg was making Splinterheads and that the monster will appear in the movie. This was the first time the movie was tied to the monster.

The website for the movie seemed to admit to the whole thing yesterday, posting, "We have the Montauk Monster." The blog for the movie also made an admission, linking to Papers' story and another hoax report and adding, "Thanks Darren's sister." The blog, especially, has enough content that it seems genuine, as opposed to the work of a prankster.

Arguments in favor of the hoax theory:

• The body is missing, supposedly "stolen," a fishy story. Who steals a bag of bones and goo?
• There has been no examination by scientists, as promised.
• It's the simplest explanation. Occam's razor.
• The movie people are claiming credit on their website and blog.
• Goldberg and the other women were acting kind of funny on Plum TV.

Arguments against Splinterhead creating the monster:

• Splinterhead is about a carnival. Why would there be monsters is such a movie? Further, it has been described repeatedly not as a horror or paranormal movie but as a comedy. Falsely claiming credit for creating the Montauk Monster would fit better with a comedy than actually having such an ugly creature in the movie, right?
• The moviemakers never come out and say on their website or blog that they actually made the monster. They only imply it. Perhaps they are having a bit of fun.
• There is no proof that Darren and Rachel Goldberg are related, only a statement on Darren Goldberg's blog, which could be a joke.
• Papers is trying to sell montauk-monster.com. Maybe this is all a big scam to drive traffic to the site, somehow!
• How has the story stayed under the radar all week? Montauk-monster.com had this days ago, why did it take so long for anyone to notice? And was Gotham News really the first news publication to cover the story, beating the TV people, blogs (save for Montauk-monster.com) and at least one newspaper on the case? How?
• How could so many people have been fooled by a movie prop? Wouldn't it have looked suspiciously plasticky or something?

Either way, a movie has managed to attach itself, cheaply, to a fairly large media phenomenon. One way or another, it's guerilla marketing. And we all kind of new that's how it would end up, didn't we?

[Montauk-Monster.com, Montauk-Monster.com, Gotham News]

(Darren Goldberg picture via Sersen Park)

Agreeing with us that the creature is almost certainly the product of viral marketing, the tipster pointed us to Cartoon Network's Cryptids Are Real, which has apparently been running targeted ads on GMail and which, as the rightmost pictures above show, has created similar monsters for its own website.

Oh also, the tipster works for Time Warner, so the person may be involved in a big marketing conspiracy, but doesn't work in TV UPDATE: but only as a freelancer and swears no one put him/her up to tipping us so maybe not. (The heat is making us paranoid!)

At the time of writing, our original Montauk monster post has more than 60,000 views in less than eight hours, and the Huffington Post has even given the monster a column, which is all probably as strong an indication as any that no one should be trying to work an office job anywhere this week. Take some vacation days or call in sick! The summer will be over before you know it! It's the cucumber season!

UPDATE2: Original tipster: "I can promise my firm is not part of a viral campaign, we just were fascinated with whatever that thing is and thought we would share."

And another (new!) tipster echoes one of our commenters: "Figured the monster out. It is a sea turtle without its shell - seriously. It is a blown up picture, for sure. Draw a shell on it, and you will see that I am right."

UPDATE3: The emerging consensus in the comments on the original item is that the creature is a dead dog, possibly with its paws tied together and possibly thrown into the ocean. Ugh. See comments from Snowden, forensic worker skiingtheK12 and others starting here or here.

http://view.break.com/513310 - Watch more free videos

[Cinematical]

While we wouldn't pretend we're too cool to anticipate The Dark Knight, our old-fashioned theatergoing sensibilities defy our will to get this exercised about a commercial. Of course, if and/or when David Mamet finally gets off the couch and takes his cremated dog for a walk in sly support of his forthcoming Redbelt, we'll be the first ones there with our own cameras. We know, we know — we're such snobs.

• Ramsey the Intern Videoblogs 'Dark Knight' Viral Event [MTV]

Jaded as we can be, the actual human in us does bristle a wee bit at the tasteful YES YOU LOOK FAT IN THOSE JEANS SARAH MARSHALL and I HATE YOU SARAH MARSHALL plugs scrawled all over our nation's metropolitan hubs. We'd love to think the anonymous San Francisco reactions picked up Tuesday by Hollywood Elsewhere are simply meta-culture critiques of media saturation and the General Absurdity of It All. Still, we wouldn't put it past the postmodern jokers at Uni to have stripped a batch of interns of their ID's, put $50 cash in their pockets and quietly sent them out like Watergate plumbers to fight their nasty word-of-mouth against trees, street lamps and anything else tape will stick to. Either way, we're guessing the real Sarah Marshalls of the world are considering viral marketing overall the stupidest idea ever right about now.

• Bay Area 'Sarah' Backlash? [Hollywood Elsewhere]

All it takes is an e-mail address, to which an actual computer program pretending to be Dent will respond immediately:

Citizens of Gotham! The future of our city rests in your hands!

Alone, we are helpless against the thugs and killers menacing our city.

Together, we have the power to take back Gotham.

In just a few days, you'll find out how.

The site takes phone numbers, too, entitling Dent to a spot alongside Mom, the collections henchman and the occasional misdialer in the Official Fanboy Family Plan. We'll turn our ringers up — God forbid we miss that call.

• I Believe in Harvey Dent [Warner Bros. via Cinematical]

Over the span of one day, Cordarounds flooded the internet with clips of Palmer giving confusing instructions to a caricature artist on drawing the man of her dreams. "I want him to be smart and sporty. Maybe you could draw him with a book in his hand or a graduation cap? And on a surf board maybe? And he should be funny, so definitely with a smile," Palmer tells the artist.

After posting video and pics on the Cordarounds blog and Facebook page, Palmer's gang continued the barrage of internet assault by continually posting "GOT ANY ROMANTIC ADVICE FOR KAREN? WE WANT TO KNOW" and "THRILLIING UPDATE!!!!! KAREN HAS SECURED HER FIRST MEETUP. YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE IT SOON AFTER IT HAPPENS." Much like those Porntube posters touting their own vids. Cordarounds' cloyingness had users pranking the Cordaround blog and Facebook wall with gems such as these:

The ad campaign ended with a useless "We will see what happens." Pics or it didn't happen, more like it. The viral marketing for Cordarounds ended up being as annoying as corduroys themselves.