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AT&T's Marketing Fail

by ronrule
13 replies


AT&T, you do realize that the Trojan horse is referring to an incident where intruders gave a seemingly harmless gift to ransack the city of Troy, right? By posting this next to your Digital Life Unlocking app, you’re essentially saying "Here’s a gift that appears to be for your benefit, but is really a device that will eventually be used against you."

Marketing fail of the year.


AT&T's Marketing Fail
#atandt #fail #marketing
  • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
    Now, that's hilarious! As I prep for the Eagles game this evening, it was nice to get a little chuckle.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    Definitely a shot at the NSA.

    Could have been a rogue employee in the marketing department.
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  • Profile picture of the author cjp214
    Yeah, out of all the things they could've picked?! I don't get it.

    Has to be either plain stupidity on their part to ignore the associations with trojans, NSA, etc. or a marketer (who moonlights at Verizon) doing it intentionally.

    Alas, these things happen when you're a mega-corporation with ridiculous ad/marketing budgets. More fun for us!

    Corey
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  • Profile picture of the author misterkailo
    it didn't fail.. it got you guys talking about it

    viral marketing
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    • Profile picture of the author dmaster555
      Originally Posted by misterkailo View Post

      it didn't fail.. it got you guys talking about it

      viral marketing
      Agreed.

      How many smart ones with popular blogs will bring this to peoples attention?

      and in the process, people will forget the stupid "mistake" and many of them will have certainly gotten curious about the product offering and learned about it. Silly AT&T.
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    • Profile picture of the author ronrule
      Originally Posted by misterkailo View Post

      it didn't fail.. it got you guys talking about it

      viral marketing
      I seriously doubt they did it on purpose.
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      • Profile picture of the author x3xsolxdierx3x
        Originally Posted by ronrule View Post

        I seriously doubt they did it on purpose.
        Agreed.

        Sure, there are times when it makes sense to elicit some confusion simply to garner attention through viral marketing, however, I don't believe this is one of those times.

        Think about the context here.

        There are many other ways that viral marketing could have been achieved, and wouldn't have been a clear distinct jab at the core features/benefits of the product.

        I don't think this was done intentionally.

        And, I don't think attention, at least not in this context, will be beneficial....no matter how many bloggers speak about this.

        I hate to bring politics into all of this, but think of the U.S. of A.'s former Commander-in-Chief. Sure, the declaration of the big "Mission Accomplished" banner displayed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln caught a TON of attention, especially at a time where all things 'the-internet' were booming by leaps and bounds. The timing and context, however, led even the most die-hard Republicans to do a proverbial face/forehead-palm slap because of just how utterly out of sync it was with reality and general public sentiment.

        Glued to Fox News, and his biggest proponent ever, even my grandmother did that palm-forehead slap.

        Attention isn't ALWAYS a good thing. Context matters.
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    • Profile picture of the author whland
      Hahaha. "Facepalm" That's hilarious.

      Although it did get people to talk about it. It doesn't make me want to use it. So a fail on that part.

      Chad
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  • Profile picture of the author BizQ
    Sometimes things mean exactly what they appear to mean.

    Take note.
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  • Profile picture of the author Malcolm Thomas
    Wow, that is really interesting. Thanks for posting this, it definitely made me laugh
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  • Profile picture of the author NewParadigm
    it was some dumb young buck googling "old house" images and misspelled house as horse while he was texting and playing video games.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hill
    For all you guys saying they did this to get attention .. yeah the WRONG kind of attention. This negative ad will hurt their business more than it will improve it. After all, people tend to really scrutinize large corporations especially ones that you rely on.

    This ad is definitely an epic fail unless of course they are talking about the NSA ramping up their spy ring in america.
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  • Profile picture of the author ronrule
    It used to be that if your phone was stolen it was so they could wipe it and sell it. Now with Banking and Email apps, the goal is to see how much information they could get from it, THEN wipe it and sell it. Now the same person who stole your phone could access your HOUSE? And for those who would say you can set a PIN, etc... so what? Everyone who uses this will have their email set up on their phone too, one could easily request a reset, validate by email or text, and get right in. Bad idea all around... this ad serves as a reminder of what we could be getting ourselves into. And that doesn't even begin to get into the whole NSA information gathering from AT&T, Google, Apple, etc. If you ever find yourself locked out of your house, use your phone to call a locksmith. It's cheaper anyway :p
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