Where's My Gnome?

Some folks were instantly suspicious when fliers began popping up around New York City just before Christmas seeking information on the whereabouts of a stolen garden gnome. The fliers, you see, contained a toll-free telephone number and the URL of a Website (wheresmygnome.com) both of which smacked of an elaborate joke or off-the-wall guerrilla marketing experiment. Those who dialed the number heard a recorded voice plead for information about the missing gnome, then say, "Mom, if this is you, hang up right now." Visitors to the amateurish-looking Website were treated to a laughable "newscast" attributed to a nonexistent TV station and encouraged to submit information via a decidedly non-amateurish fill-out form rigged to transmit data to a consumer tracking agency.

The Website also featured a pair of obviously doctored "postcards" purporting to show that the figurine had been whisked away to exotic locales à la the gnome-napping scenario in the 2001 film "Amelie" (which, in turn, was modeled on a much-imitated prank first reported in the mid-1980s by Australian folklorist Bill Scott and discussed at length by Jan Harold Brunvand in his 1989 collection of urban legends, Curses! Broiled Again!).

Print ads such as the one at right began appearing in newspapers around the country (including the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times Book Review) on Sunday, December 28. "Wanted: My Garden Gnome," they read. "Have you seen him? Has red pointy hat. He was taken last week off my front lawn... Call Bill." Would anyone really go to so much trouble and expense to recover a $29.99 (if that) lawn ornament? Surely not.

The evidence points to an apparent viral marketing campaign on behalf of Travelocity.com. Not only is the travel booking agency prominently mentioned in the fake news video, the WHOIS record for wheresmygnome.com indicates that the address of the domain's owner is identical to that of McKinney + Silver, a Raleigh, NC advertising firm recently retained by Travelocity. To cap it off, wheresmygnome.com's administrative contact is one Bruce Fougere, who happens to be — you guessed it — an advertising copywriter.