Too much promotion, perhaps?

Sometimes, viral marketing opportunities happen out of the blue ... and I wonder whether, sometimes, the recipients of all that publicity can receive too much promotion.

For example, this morning, someone sent me an email full of political cartoons. The first featured a link to a Web site that looks a lot like the New York Times' site -- but isn't. Whoever put together the "joke" used what appears to me to be the New York Times' logo and style.

In fact, I can't help but wonder whether the creators of the parody site intended to fly under the New York Times' radar. If so, that's probably not happening. If I received an email linking to the parody site, then I imagine thousands of people received it.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some of those people are lawyers who'd be interested in pursuing the legalities of using a publication's logo and style. I'm assuming that it was done, in this case, as a joke and without the Times' permission but, of course, I don't know for sure.

Regardless, I wonder if this will turn out to be one of those cases where too much promotion, and too much viral marketing, is a bad thing. We shall see....