When you first start planning a big trip, step one will likely happen at the Google search bar. Step two might be clicking onto the images of your target destination. The North Face, in a campaign with agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, took advantage of this consumer behavior to keep its name top of mind with travelers considering an adventure sports excursion.

The brand and agency took pictures of athletes wearing the brand while trekking to famous locations around the world, including Brazil’s Guarita State Park and Farol do Mampimptuba, Cuillin in Scotland and Peru’s Huayna Picchu. They then updated the Wikipedia images in the articles for those locations so that now, the brand would appear in the top of Google image search results when consumers researched any of those locations—all done for a budget of zero dollars.

“Our mission is to expand our frontiers so that our consumers can overcome their limits. With the ‘Top of Images’ project, we achieved our positioning and placed our products in a fully contextualized manner as items that go hand in hand with these destinations," explained Fabricio Luzzi, CEO of The North Face Brazil in a statement. 

According to the agency, the biggest obstacle of the campaign was updating the photos without attracting attention of Wikipedia moderators to sustain the brand’s presence for as long as possible, as site editors could change them at any time. 

The "hack" worked, at least for a while, evident in a quick Google search of some of the places mentioned in the campaign's case study video.

Soon after the North Face campaign was featured on AdAge, Wikipedia’s volunteer editors were quick to remove North Face’s photos, noting that the effort breached the site’s user terms for paid advocacy. 

Thanks to this braggadocio video and your article we've now removed the product-placement from all article. The user accounts behind the edits have been reported for breaching the Terms of User for undisclosed paid advocacy. https://t.co/XFODUri5sF For shame @TheNorthFace.

— Liam Wyatt (@Wittylama) May 28, 2019

William Beutler, CEO of agency Beutler Ink and a volunteer Wikipedia editor told Ad Age, “What The North Face and Leo Burnett did wasn't clever or impressive—it was duplicitous, using Wikipedia's openness against it, and in fact was directly contradictory to Wikipedia's Terms of Use.”

When its comes to altering Wikipedia pages, that can be treacherous territory for agencies and brands. Back in 2017, for example, Burger King was behind an award-winning stunt that hacked Google Home—and altered the brand’s Wikipedia page—in order to “extend” the life of its TV commercial. 

Nine of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors then issued an open letter to Burger King demanding the brand apologize for the stunt because the campaign broke several of the site's rules when it comes to advertiser-related activity. 

From Leo Burnett Tailor Made's original statement, it seems the agency was anticipating such a reaction to the North Face effort all along. In stunts like these, the ensuing controversy and attention around it can be part of the overall campaign goal and strategy.

Ad Age reached out to both Leo Burnett Tailor Made for comment on what's happened with the campaign so far as well as the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that supports Wikipedia. We'll update when we hear back.