It has already presided over one of the biggest PR disasters of the year and now Vodafone faces being sued by potentially thousands of its customers over poor network performance.
Sydney law firm PiperAlderman is seeking out disgruntled Vodafone customers to form a class action lawsuit over dropped calls, reception issues and poor data performance that have left customers fuming.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has already said it is investigating the matter.
Vodafone initially blamed software bugs and argued that there were no serious problems with its network. Continue Reading
We always knew there would be talking, and discussion, and discussion about the things raised in discussions, they’ll be dialogue (but no sloganeering) and more discussions as we talk through the issues relating to the dialogue.
Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints about an ice-cream company’s magazine ad featuring a pregnant nun, ordering that it not be published again.
The print advertisement by Antonio Federici, published in The Lady and Grazia in June, featured a heavily pregnant nun eating from a tub of ice-cream, accompanied by the slogan “immaculately conceived”.
The ad was part of its “ice-cream is our religion” campaign.
Some Catholics are said to have found it offensive, the UK advertising standards board agreed and banned it.
Quite right, too.
That should please the Catholics.
You’d think the UK Ad Standards Board would feel satisfied at a job well done.
And the company, the recipient of all this free global publicity, should be happiest of all.
All this attention, that hasn’t cost a cent, has saved them a fortune in future advertising fees.
That’s a tough lesson for brand Tiger Woods, rename Cheetah Woods, to learn the hard way.
Hot on the heels of Accenture, Gillette and others, AT&T has joined the crowd, severing its ties with the golfing pro, joining a growing list of marketers distancing themselves from the golfer amid the public furor surrounding allegations of his infidelities.
“We are ending our sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods and wish him well in the future,” said a spokesman for AT&T on Thursday.
AT&T’s relationship with Mr. Woods began more than five years ago when the telecommunications company started sponsoring Tiger Jam, an annual star-studded concert that is the biggest fund-raiser for the Tiger Woods Foundation.
That contract gave AT&T the right to have Mr. Woods conduct golf clinics for its customers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The phone giant further expanded its relationship with the golfer in February to include having its corporate logo—a blue and white sphere—appear on Mr. Woods’s golf bag. Continue Reading
In the courts of Public Opinion, it appears some people think that the means justifies the end.
Depending on what you believe, you’ll think that man-made climate change is either “the greatest moral challenge of our time” (aka, Kevin Rudd) or the biggest con of our time, just follow the money trail, it leads straight to Al Gore and those scientists on the receiving end of multi-million dollar grants.
Thankfully, some blokes at Futerra were up to the challenge to develop its Rules of The Game blueprint which outlines the communication strategy for the scare-the-bejeezus-out-of-you man-made climate change movement.
It begins by “blowing away some myths” such as the ones it identified below.
If you want to know how the doomsdayers convince YOU that the planet is about to end, polar bears are becoming extinct and all seaside homes will be under water in the next few years, read on.
Read on and be really, really offended that they insult your intelligence this way. Continue Reading
So there’s this story inThe Australian about a fake memo that has been doing the rounds of the Internet claiming McDonald’s stores deliberately rip off customers.
The Australian says that it has been revealed to be the work of the same prankster behind an infamous email about a seven-legged spider (which is very funny if you haven’t seen it.)
The document, mocked-up with an official McDonald’s Australia letterhead and signed by fictitious managing director “Robert Trugabe”, outlines a secret plan to save money by leaving items out of drive-through orders.
“If the girls leave one item out of every second or third order, this adds up to several thousand dollars per week revenue,” it says.
“We need to work out if there is a way of making this a procedure without making it documented.”
Okay, so hot on the heels of my post that was called 7 Extremely Unfortunate Domain Names comes these 25 seriously embarrassing marketing blunders.
First up, I’d like to thank the many websites that have contributed by sharing different blunders – without their hard work and dedication to the noble cause of creating laughter in the world, it would be extremely difficult for me to have compiled this list.
So, without further ado, here it goes (in no particular order):
#1. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux released an American campaign with the slogan Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.
(Actually, I can think of a few other things, such as hairy nostrils that require tweezers, parking tickets issued to your dog and viruses that crap out your computer that all suck. But hey, let’s not quibble about it.)
#2. Coors coverted its slogan Turn It Loose into Spanish. Its translation reads Suffer from Diarrhea.
#3. Clairol introduced the curling iron Mist Stick into Germany. In Germany mist is slang for manure.
#4. Gerber‘s entry into selling baby food in Africa featured a beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. In Africa, marketers put pictures on the label of what’s inside since most people can’t read. (Even Africans don’t feed their kids dead babies.) In other bad news, Gerber is the French word for vomiting so I’d guess that France will be omitted from any expansion plans.
#5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, presumably named after the notorious naughty magazine. Continue Reading
Before you buy a domain, think about how it looks on the web. And if you want to know why, check out these web administrators that learnt the hard way (or perhaps it’s a sense of humor on display?)
Is this Cumbria Storage Systems or something that’s (err) entirely different?
