Microsoft says 'sorry' after Japan quake marketing gaffe
Opportunistic Bing tweet sparks anger online
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Microsoft offered to donate $100,000 to Japan's quake victims, one day after a devastating series of tsunamis struck the country on Friday 11 March.
Unfortunately, the software giant initially turned its supposedly altruistic efforts into a marketing opportunity, with MS tweeting the following unwise message on its Bing Twitter account:
Six hours later the company was forced to apologise for the gaffe, after followers of its Bing account on Twitter complained that Microsoft was taking advantage of the quake by marketing its search engine.
Microsoft should be applauded for donating the cash, but someone might want to do a rethink about why it was ever necessary for the company to cheapen its efforts to help Japan's quake victims. ®
COMMENTS
Nothing new
It was the advert for nappies (or washing powder or whatever it was) that got me the most - "1 pack = 1 vaccine". It was like saying "Buy our stuff or we let the kids die."
This kind of fake support to blackmail people into buying our stuff or supporting our brand crap needs to be stopped across the board. If these companies really care, they should just donate the money quietly (by quietly, I don't mean secretly, they can tell people and claim some nice, warmfuzzy image for it to an extent, so long as they don't go over the top into tasteless marketing country. I don't know where the line is though, that's another debate) and be done with it.
Don't be silly
Whilst I agree that it was a little tacky to try to publicise bing in this fashion, I suspect it was an honest mistake not thought though by someone who had the best intentions.
As for your tripe about the Gates foundation being a tax rightoff, well what utter utter shite, perhaps you should do a little investigation for writing such nonsense. Whatever you think of gates business practice while at Microsoft, the billions give anyway to good causes deserves nothing but praise.
Rather than interpret this as a marketing technique,
I viewed this in the same way as all those "every time you forward this email, Microsoft will donate $1 to the Make A Wish Foundation" emails (that still appear to be doing the rounds) - i.e. spam.
As it's not a hoax, I'll assume that I just don't understand twitter.
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