Tasteless Tweet of the Week: Microsoft Apologizes for Winehouse Plug

By

Sometimes you hit, and sometimes you miss. Microsoft missed big time this week.

Within hours after the announcement on Saturday of the death of British singer Amy Winehouse in her London apartment, TweetBox360, the official public relations Twitter account for XBox360 UK, decided to engage in a little memorial marketing.

“Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune: zune.social.net/album/Amy-Wine...” tweeted the company.

Fans weren’t amused, and accused the giant of Redmond of engaging in some rather tasteless opportunistic marketing. “Tasteless” and “crass” were among the tweeted accusations that followed by fans.

The company quickly began backtracking, and the Twitter account quickly began apologizing, according to MSNBC.

“Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download’ tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you,” read the first tweet, quickly followed by a second. “With Amy W’s passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy’s family and friends at this very sad time,” read the next tweet.

The nature of tweet-based marketing – the point of which is to put the tweet out as quickly as possible – means that not everything gets fully checked for appropriateness, unlike with say...a magazine advertisement, a TV commercial or even a Facebook post, and Microsoft isn’t the first member of this club.

Baked goods company Entenmann’s recently had to apologize for a tweet that seemed to use the much-disliked Casey Anthony trial verdict to sell more baked goods, and designer Kenneth Cole had to lay out the mea culpas earlier this year after using the anti-government demonstrations in Cairo, Egypt to drum up interest in the company’s spring fashion line.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.




Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TechZone360. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

TechZone360 Contributor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

How Technology Has Affected eCommerce?

By: Contributing Writer    6/8/2023

Today, the eCommerce sector is still growing and for a good reason. The fact of the matter is the modern technology keeps evolving and reshaping how c…

Read More

The Ambidexterity in Digital Transformation

By: Lenildo Morais    6/8/2023

There are two ways of distinguishing digital transformation: representative and generative digital transformation. Digital ambidexterity embraces both…

Read More

As Open Source on the Mainframe Continues to Gain Popularity, Linux Foundation Announces Call for Papers

By: Arti Loftus    6/8/2023

The Linux Foundation's Open Mainframe Project has announced the launch of Call for Proposals (CFPs) for its 4th annual Open Mainframe Summit.

Read More

Jumio Unmasks the Deceptive World of Deepfakes

By: Greg Tavarez    6/7/2023

Jumio, a provider of automated identity proofing solutions, recently released its 2023 Online Identity Study to shed light on the potential risks pose…

Read More

A Boost to Enterprise Printing: ThinPrint Launches New Print Management Solution

By: Alex Passett    6/6/2023

The latest iteration to ThinPrint's solutions portfolio is ThinPrint 13. It features V4 printer driver support, cost-saving options, a PowerShell exte…

Read More