10 Worst Tech PR Stunts of All Time

[JMcEntegart]

Publicity stunts that backfired completely.

10 Worst Tech PR Stunts of All Time : Read more

 

[Onus]

I'd say the entire marketing campaign for Bulldozer was among the worst ever, as it pretty much shot AMD's credibility in the performance PC market.

 

[Longscout]

Internal fail alert!
Paragraph 1, Line 6: "...New Zealand vs. Australia ruby match in New Zealand. Vodafone..."
You see the problem (clearly someone KNOWS how to spell rugby because they get it right in the next paragraph, last line.

As for this list, each story itself: it is remarkable to me that in ever attempting to be "cool," those chasing that shadowy goal so often seem to be downright evil rather than clever - pushing social mores envelopes until they burst into flame. In the instance of the Vodafone story...it is a wonder that the employee with the fake gun was not laid out ready for the morgue, whether because one of the patrons fought for his life and that others or because the police saw the gun and identified themselves and fired in the same millisecond. My, my, my!

 

[Longscout]

SONY merely lost its head for a few weeks, then caught itself one day in the middle of the night. As for the genius who recommended this advertisement as a peachy keen place to place a significant expenditure of corporate earnings to multiply SONY interests and broaden its customer base...apparently the committe that makes decisions about such things showed up fully clothed and ready for champagne, which they drank through funnels. Later that same employee was seen along the docks in Yokohama searching for an American tourist class barque upon which to float himself to freedom from ridicule extraordinaire to which his former colleagues, family members, and neighbors had been subjecting him since his firing and threat of complete ostracism and death by saying that he was born of an American GI and Japanese prostitute late in the 1950s. Ah well...let them drink blood.

 

[daddywalter]

It was an ad campaign rather than a publicity stunt, but I'm reminded of IBM's campaign for OS/2 Warp which included an ad saying it "obliterates my desktop". Warp wa a pretty good OS, but that campaign had a big part in its marketplace failure.