OOPs - PR and Marketing Mishaps Published June - July 2007 Sony in a stew over goat carcass Sony has sparked major controversy over animal cruelty by using a slaughtered goat to promote a video game, The God of War 2 launched in Athens Greece. Sickening images of the party and goat carcass appeared in the company’s official PlayStation magazine - but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/04/sony_apologizes.html for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run. The goat carcass blunder sparked considerable comment across the media. For more information http://consumerist.com/consumer/marketing/dead-goats-are-not-cool-sony-apologizes-for-using-freshly-slaughtered-goat-at-video-game-release-party-256535.php DIGG Disaster The diggosphere exploded recently when the code that helps decrypt HD-DVDs was leaked on www.digg.com Digg deleted stories that mentioned the code, and their users have responded by spamming Digg’s front page with the code. The incident was a disaster for Digg, as the lost credibility with their community has considerable damaged their reputation.  Read more here:  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/0235228 Sony Laptop Batteries Back in Hot Water: Acer Brand Institutes Widespread Recall of 27,000 Units for Fear of Implosion Acer Inc., one of the largest computer makers in the world, launched a recall of about 27,000 laptop batteries, becoming the latest company to warn of faulty Sony-made lithium-ion batteries that could overheat and cause a fire, the AP reports. More than 10 million notebook batteries have been recalled worldwide since the problem was traced to Sony last year. Other major computer makers, including Dell, Lenovo and have also issued similar recalls.(Bulldog Reporter May 07) Saatchi and Saatchi get the boot - what a bovver! Saatchi & Saatchi has been fired over their proposed leaked series of ads featuring dead rockers wearing Doc Marten’s.  Later Doc Marten apologised (http://www.gigwise.com/news.asp?contentid=32153) but by this time there was considerable negative coverage on the web that would have impacted on both Saatchis and Doc Marten. Read more:  http://www.brandflakesforbreakfast.com/2007/05/dead-rock-stars-selling-doc-martens.html  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-punkboots26webmay26,1,3496834.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=2&cset=true Vocus not following their own rules Vocus came under fire after they spammed unsolicited promotions to a range of bloggers, announcing the availability of a white paper and webinar about blogger relations, The Five Golden Rules of Blogger Relations. The irony was not lost on the bloggers that received the email pitching them to get the whitepaper and the blogosphere erupted with complaints and negative comments about Vocus.  To their credit Vocus did apologise about the spam on their own blog saying that they had acquired PR Web and were using an old customer list. One blogger who was particularly critical was Susan of GetGood blog fame who said: "I learned about the email blast from a fellow blogger, who emailed me about it because I was one of the bloggers interviewed by Vocus for the paper and mentioned in the email. Needless to say, I was less than pleased that the firm appeared to have broken just about every guideline I and the other bloggers had suggested". Read Susan’s post http://getgood.typepad.com/ PR Influences is produced by innovative online pr agency Network PR. Based in Sydney Australia the agency focuses on online social media engagement and organic search engine optimisation for a range of B2B, technology and entertainment clients. Contact Network PR if you are ready for innovative pr strategies.

PR Influences: Published by Sydney based Network PR. Network PR focuses on online pr, business pr and technology pr. This article examines pr examples from around the globe.