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Top PR goof ups of 2007
By Palin Ningthoujam on Dec 18, 2007 in cases
Who could forget the incident of Microsoft PR agency sending off the spokesperson briefing document to the journalist instead of the client by accident? Don’t worry, we have an Indian version of it as well. Ok what about that one about the YouTube video of rats in a Taco Bell?
Shel Holtz has picked out the PR and marketing gaffes from the newly launched Money magazine’s annual ‘101 Dumbest Moments in Business’ list. Check them out. Quite a few lessons to be learnt from our global PR counterparts’ misadventures:
#8—A YouTube video of rats frolicking in a New York Taco Bell gets millions of views.
#16—Microsoft PR agency Waggener Edstrom sends a 12-page dossier on a Wired contributing editor to the Wired contributing editor. The less-than-flattering dossier, calling the editor “tricky” and “sensational,” was meant to go to Microsoft executives.
#17—Redux is warned by the FDA to rename its energy drink, which was called Cocaine. It was renamed to Censored, then NoName.
#21—The Cartoon Network hires a marketing agency to place electronic lightboards promoting its characters. In Boston, they’re mistaken for bombs, creating a crisis.
#36—Best Buy is sued by the Connecticut attorney general over its in-store, kiosk-based intranet, which employees reportedly used to display prices higher than those advertised on the external website.
Read more about 9 others at Shel Holtz’s blog.
I wonder where arts this recent one. The perils of copy pasting blindly.
On Mar 14, 2008, Cell Phone Auction said:
The camera stores were hit from virtually every angle. I suppose there was once a time in the far- off past when they could prosper by selling cameras, but the big monthly magazines with their endless pages of discount mail- order ads in the back took care of that. At least, if a store couldn’t make a profit on an SLR body or a manufacturer- branded lens, SLRs required many accessories, and those were profitable. Then came the point- and- shoot revolution in the 1980s— cameras that not only did not require…