OOPs - PR and Marketing Mishaps Published April - May 2007 The PR Influences team brings you pr and marketing mishaps from around the globe. The Zune stops ZZZZZZ The Zune, Microsoft's digital music player came under fire recently when the Zunemobile, a tricked-out Toyota FJ, came to a New York neighbourhood belting out its beats into the small hours from huge ‘competition’ speakers in the back. The neighbours didn't welcome the 3 a.m stunt and filed a noise complaint. They also videotaped the event and created a Web page — wakeupmicrosoft.com — to post their complaint and demand restitution. Welcome to the Web 2.0 world.  (Source: The Seattle Times - March 5 2007) From food crisis to communication crisis - recalled pet food A March 16 recall of 60 million containers of Menu Food brand cat and dog food is a good example of how not to handle a crisis. The recall came two weeks after the first of nine pets died in "tasting trials" run by Menu Foods involving 40 to 50 pets.  Although Menu Foods posted a list of recalled products on its Web site and publicized two toll-free numbers, the phone lines were said to be jammed for days. Pet owners are now suing and a yahoo group of pet owners call for a class action case has already formed  http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/MenuFoodsClassAction/ within 7 days there were  2261 New Messages - 7 New Databases - 241 New Photos. The group says “This group is for pet owners that have lost a pet, or their pet became ill due to renal (kidney) failure from eating Menu Foods cat or dog food”.  Moral: you can kill the pet but you can’t kill the story in Web 2.0 YouTube - Politics - it goes both ways In the last edition of PRI we discussed the use of YouTube in political campaigns, with Hilary Clinton launching her nomination on YouTube. Following that there have been many anti-Hilary ads airing on the social networking site.  See what you think at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT81ZlqCja0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b14sDQCeQc&mode=related&search

PR Influences produced by Sydney pr agency Network PR. Marketing mishaps series of articles on the industry negative stories in public relations