For Immediate Release

Contact: Fern Marcya Edison
Ericho Communications845.679.6319
fern@erichopr.com

New ‘Tappening’ advertising campaign challenges the notion of “Truth in Advertising,” while embracing an opposing concept: Lying

Tappening co-founders ask, “Why is it some bottled water brands still don’t list their source?” and encourage their rapidly-growing customer base to “start a lie” themselves…

New York (July 27, 2009) -- Twenty-five-year marketing veterans and co-founders of the Tappening campaign (www.tappening.com) question the idea that “truth in advertising” actually exists. Certainly not for everyone, they say.   For example, ads for bottles filled with tap water that are labeled and marketed with water cascading over pristine mountaintops.  So, the prolific duo has decided to take the opposite approach in their fourth national advertising campaign in under two years. While continually bringing attention to the ongoing debate they have engaged in with the bottled water industry, they’ve now decided to even the playing field -- and lie. (But they want to tell everyone first…of course.)

“Puffery is one thing, but some advertising is simply lies. I’ve observed that there are two types who perpetrate this: Those who admit it and those who don’t,” notes Tappening co-founder, Mark DiMassimo, whose agency created the new ad campaign. Tappening partner, Eric Yaverbaum, adds, “We’re not just admitting it up front, we’re bragging about it. We want people to know we’re blatantly lying in our new campaign…and, most importantly, that everyone should pay close attention to what’s factual in marketing and what’s – not so much.”

The campaign will include a website where anyone can go to “start their own lie” at www.startalie.com, and can view or download a series of four ads to pass to their friends--which are all lies. This ad series includes:

1. Bottled Water Makes Acid Rain Fall on Playgrounds
2. Bottled Water is the Primary Cause of Restless Leg Syndrome
3. Bottled Water Causes Blindness in Puppies
4. Bottled Water: 98% Melted Ice Caps. 2% Polar Bear Tears

The pair have budgeted $535,000 for this campaign which will include wild postings in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas. They expect over 100,000 of their downloadable viral ads flying around the internet within 24 hours of release from their daily site traffic, to Twitter, to the Tappening Facebook and MySpace group to Friendfeed.

While continuing to educate the public, and likely agitating the multi-nationals profiting from the sale of a product the two have always felt is highly unnecessary, the ‘marketing activists’ DiMassimo and Yaverbaum have contributed to a liquid revolution that now has driven the bottled water industry under the microscope of Congress. The joint venture between the NYC agencies they run -- ad agency/social media hot shop DiMassimo Goldstein (DIGO) and high profile PR firm, Ericho Communications -- was launched in November of 2007.

From ‘Good Morning America’ calling the Tappening bottles an eco-product of the year (2008) and People magazine featuring the bottle…to a debate in Business Week and the cover of magazines and national television appearances, the Tappening message has been heard and praised from coast to coast.

DiMassimo says, "We’ve spent these two years using our marketing and public relations abilities to un-sell bottled water hype. But I still see cascading waterfalls on labels that do not list the source of that water.”

Yaverbaum adds, “This creates an illusion that it is superior to tap water, because that’s what billions of dollars of bottled water advertising has claimed or implied. The thing is, that's simply not true."

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Yaverbaum and DiMassimo are available for interview.
Copies of the four series ads done by DIGO are available upon request.
Press pictures available upon request.

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About Tappening: Tappening (www.tappening.com) -- founded by Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum -- is an educational campaign designed to encourage the public to drink tap water whenever possible, and to send a message to the bottled water industry about its unnecessary and extreme waste of fossil fuels and resultant pollution of the Earth.

About DiMassimo Goldstein: DiMassimo Goldstein (DIGO) is a NY-based marketing strategy and integrated communications agency focused on creating, inspiring and maintaining brand advocates, in order to build brands the fastest and most efficient way possible. DIGO’s “digital brand direct” approach provides strategy, design, innovation, advertising, direct, digital, brand advocacy and social marketing for clients ranging from blue chip to entrepreneurial marketers, such as Crunch, Citibank, Gateway, Vitamin Water, The Plaza Hotel, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, GoSmile, ESPN and The American Red Cross, among others. For more information, visit www.digobrands.com.

About Ericho Communications:  Founded in 2007 by bestselling author, Eric Yaverbaum, Ericho Communications is a full-service public relations firm "where green meets the latest that technology has to offer."  Clients range from the launch of the first-ever video text messaging company during the presidential race  and  a new collegiate peer-to-peer video-sharing web site, to launching Tappening and working with the Tibet (amongst others) foreign government.

Yaverbaum is the former president of Jericho Communications, where he managed a "who’s who" of brand names for 21 years, including IKEA Home Furnishings, Domino's Pizza, Subway Sandwiches and Salads, Progressive Insurance, TCBY, Sony, H&M, Bell Atlantic, American Express, and many more.

Yaverbaum is also the author of four books, including PR for Dummies, which is required reading in marketing classes at 57 U.S. universities.  His last book, The Everything Leadership Book, was published in 2008.  His fifth book, co-authored with his teenage daughter comes out in November and is titled Life's Little College Admissions Insights.  Ericho Communications has offices in New York City, White Plains, NY and in Tampa, FL.

For more information, visit www.erichopr.com <http://www.erichopr.com> .