Stock Photo Faux-Viral Attracts Bloggers, But Not Corbis

Everyone that starts an agency has a dream account -- a client that, upon winning its business, validates your ability to both create and persuade.

Corbis is that dream for General Projects, a just-launched design shop that wooed its prospective client with Schtock.com.

Schtock is really flippin' cool. Each time you reload the site, you see a random, totally abstract image. When you click on the "About the image" tab, you'll find each one was composed of many stock photos. The work at left, for example, is called "Emo." Here's how many stock photos it took to produce it.

The site blog claims Schtock is the lovechild of someone at "a major stock photo company," putting illicit use to imagery that see nothing but the cutting-room floor. "Corbis" isn't mentioned outright, but all the photos can be found on Corbis's image search.

With trailing hints like that, and emails to random bloggers, General Projects led others to believe this was a Corbis-produced viral campaign.

General Projects straightened out the facts sometime late last week. The results of its work:

o Corbis was mentioned across 150 separate sites, putting the brand in front of over 200,000 viewers over the course of 4 days.
o Over 20,000 unique users visited the site itself during that time.

Artistic and interesting, but Corbis has yet to bite. In its comments section, The Denver Egotist called it "a bit weird and mildly convoluted," which is an oddly pretty and apt description.