20 injured at LG phone giveaway as PR stunt turns into riot LG has cancelled a series of publicity stunts promoting its new G2 smartphone after 20 Korean consumers were hurt as they attempted to get a free handset. The PR boffins at LG decided it would be a good idea to release 100 helium-filled balloons, each carrying a voucher entitling the recipient to claim their 950,000 won ($852. …
What sort of numpty thought releasing the balloons, with tokens worth nearly $1000 attached to them, at ground level, within a crowd, was a good idea? Most people would go bonkers for £50, never mind £500.
Surely someone should have asked 'what happens if the guests/competitors/whomever decide to rush the person with the tokens and balloons'? Ideally within about ten minutes of the practicalities being ironed out....
I ought to add the following really:
Advertising is getting people to know about you or your product.
PR is getting them to like you or your product.
Marketing is the study you do to find out how effective the above were.
These are three distinct departments in sufficiently large companies, and certainly three distinct skills. Unfortunately RegTards often lump them all together because they don't know better.
"No matter how you dress it up, anything other than respectable, trusted word-of-mouth recommendation is a form of fraud."
I'm not sure why you'd say that. Marketing is an internal exercise to determine the success or failure of a campaign, so the only fraud going on would be internal and therefore pointless, having no effect on customers other than more of the same kind of campaign.
Advertising could be considered fraud, but if you take facebook advertising as an example, they are generally just making you aware of things you have implied an interest in - I get shown sailing holidays because I talk about boats a lot and am in the age bracket, am male, and probably several other factors. This isn't fraud, it's simply making me aware of the holiday provider whose message simply says they offer yachts in Croatia. It would only become fraud if I get there and they don't have yachts.
As for PR, yes probably this is all propaganda usually and designed to minimise adverse affects of things a company does badly but also to maximise what they do well.
I'm not sure why it worries you that I know the difference between these things. I don't care if other people know the difference either but it does bother me that so many commentards talk about marketing as if it's advertising which is is distinctly different from. This is due to OCD, you'll find a lot of the comments on this site are born out of OCD, and among nerds the much worse form of the affliction, CDO.
"the only fraud going on would be internal and therefore pointless, having no effect on customers"
The problem is that even in larger companies they are often overlapped or stacked.
How else can you have a company in denial like Microsoft trying to tell us that everyone LOVES not-Metro and it's selling great, and if it's not selling it's because the other guys made the wrong type of computers... It's just a bunch of yes men in a circle jerk.
Next to Marketing, PR and Advertising are the least effective or beneficial entities within a company.
Sales, Engineering, Production/Manufacturing, Administration are all necessary to running a business. Any one of these departments can provide the majority of the functions of the above
Did you notice what other category is missing? As long as people are willing to take personal responsibility for their actions and perform the very best they can, management is not a requirement.
Think about that the next time you get a memo from your pointy haired management or marketing droid.
There wasn't a single injured person on the video. Just a bunch of people jumping at balloons. Not sure what the article had to do with the video. I'm betting the injuries were things like "stepped on foot", "twisted ankle after jumping", "poked a finger in my eye".
Probably get more real injuries at your average middle school soccer game.
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