Business Blunder 2
AT Enigin we try to make the right decision about marketing and customer service - hopefully we get them right, but some of the biggest companies and organisations globally prove again and again that you need to be careful, very careful, when you enact policies, change images, use services, make statements, shout out PR and even proof read.
To remind all businesses, Enigin and Enigin Distributors included - here are some the Business Blunders committed over the last 12 months - This is Part 2:
Google announces it will change its search-engine algorithm after Brooklyn-based eyeglasses retailer Vitaly Borker tells The New York Times that abundant complaints posted online by customers after Borker harassed them and treated them abusively improved his rankings in Google search results and thus increased his company’s revenue. Borker’s alleged business practices included addressing dissatisfied customers as “bitch,” sending an e-mail saying, “I AM WATCHING YOU,” and sending one woman a photograph of the front of her own apartment building. Eventually, Borker is arrested by the United States Postal Inspection Service and charged with cyberstalking, sending threatening interstate communications, mail fraud and wire fraud.
Movie director Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Mallrats fame, isn’t shy about calling himself fat, but he takes issue when a Southwest Airlines captain ejects him from an Oakland-to-Burbank flight because his heft is a “safety risk.” Not appeased by the airline’s offer of a $100 flight credit and a seat on the next flight, Smith fires off 50 tweets in a single day to his 1.6 million followers, giving the usually well regarded airline a torrent of bad PR.
As part of its energy-saving “Cool Biz” campaign, designed to reduce the use of air-conditioning in offices in the summer months, officials in the Japanese city of Isesaki enact a ban forbidding municipal employees from having facial hair.
McDonald’s announces the recall of 12 million Shrek Forever After 3D drinking glasses after it is determined that their designs—images of movie characters Shrek, Fiona, Puss ’n’ Boots, and Donkey—contain cadmium, a carcinogen that damages kidneys and bones and may also affect the brain function of children.
In the wake of the McDonald’s recall, the Associated Press commissions its own tests and finds high levels of both lead and cadmium in drinking glasses sold by companies including Time Warner, Coca-Cola, Burger King, and Disney. Decorative enamel on Warner Bros. glasses depicting characters from the Wizard of Oz, among others, contained 500 to 1,000 times the allowable levels of lead for children’s products; a red Coke glass ordered from the Coca-Cola website shed three times more cadmium than the recalled Shrek glasses.
Gregorio Iñiguez, general manager of the Chilean mint, is fired after it’s discovered that he had overseen production of a run of 50-peso coins with the nation’s name spelled “C-H-I-I-E.” Astonishingly, the coins had reportedly been seen and approved by numerous officials and had actually been in circulation since 2008.
Nine months after buying Segway—maker of an electric scooter once hailed by business luminaries as a more important invention than the Internet, around which entire cities would be designed—British multimillionaire Jimi Heselden is killed when he launches his Segway off an 80-foot cliff into Yorkshire’s River Wharfe. Despite early sales projections of 50,000 to 100,000 units per year, analysts say about that many have been sold altogether since the product’s 2001 debut.
Viewers enjoying the crisp HD coverage of England’s first 2010 World Cup match on the UK’s ITV network are treated to a strange editing decision. About three minutes into the game, the ball is thrown in, England works its way toward the goal and . . . cut to a Hyundai commercial of a driver eating an orange. Not to worry: ITV cuts back just in time to show … star player Steven Gerrard celebrating his spectacular goal, which would turn out to be the team’s only goal in the game. Among the printable epithets lobbed at the broadcaster in the aftermath are “cretins,” “inept,” “amateurish,” and “a bloody disgrace.”
Delta Air Lines passenger Josiah Allen arrives safely in Detroit after a flight from Mexico City in May. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his most important piece of checked baggage: his dog, Paco. After Paco fails to arrive on the next flight as well, Allen is informed that the dog had broken out of its kennel and escaped in Mexico City. To compensate Allen for his loss, Delta generously offers to refund the $200 fee Allen had paid to transport Paco … in the form of a credit good toward a future flight. A few days and a spate of negative publicity later, Delta offers Allen “additional compensation as well as our sincere apology.”
As part of a campaign to shed light on Google’s privacy practices, nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Watchdog sponsors a 540-square-foot video in Times Square that depicts a Google executive nefariously monitoring children with a scanner it labels “Google Analytics.” Trouble is, Consumer Watchdog itself uses a product called (you guessed it) Google Analytics to track clicks on its website. As explained by a reporter for BusinessInsider.com, “this means that Consumer Watchdog collects information about your click-behavior—certainly something Consumer Watchdog considers private information in other contexts—and sends it to a third-party: Google, just about the least trustworthy third-party on the planet in the group’s estimation.”
Four days after unveiling a new corporate logo, The Gap announces it is immediately switching back to the old design in the face of overwhelmingly negative reaction. Shortly before scrapping the redesign, the company had posted a message on its Facebook page saying, “We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding!”
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, engineers at Google turn the site’s home page into a fully functional version of the game, wasting an estimated 4.8 million hours of the world’s time and more than $120 million in lost productivity.
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