Stupid PR Stunts That Backfired Hard

5

Game Publisher THQ Nordic Hosted An AMA On 8Chan, Grosses Out The Entire Internet

THQ Nordic is a major video game publisher responsible for releasing blockbuster series like Saints Row and Metro. Big enough, then, to hire a smart and competent P.R. manager. Instead, they went with a guy whose idea of community outreach is to let the internet's slimiest collection of pond scum ask his company absolutely anything.

For those innocents fortunate enough to not know, 8chan is an imageboard that was created because some online ghouls thought 4chan was too politically correct. In 2019, THQ Nordic was approached by the site, which has been blacklisted from Google for "suspected child abuse content" to participate in a friendly AMA. To everyone's amazement (and we assume that includes 8chan's) the publisher agreed, claiming they were "approached in a very friendly and polite manner" by the 8channers.

8chanInstead of their usual way of contacting members of the gaming industry by mailing them a single bullet.

The AMA was led by THQ head of PR and marketing Phillip Brock, a man who apparently has never read his job briefing, and went off the rails as quickly as you'd expect. But through it all, Brock kept responding jocularly to all the toxic questions, ignoring the anti-PC coding and straight-up homophobic slurs as if he had developed selective bigot blindness. When one of the site's closeted pedophiles posted a question asking "where the big tiddie lolis at" with an explicit image of two large-breasted children attached, master of spin Brock replied: "you got them already we'd say," probably while thinking how great he was at his job.

News of the AMA quickly received a torrent of backlash on regular, medium-toxic social media. Before the day was even over, half of THQ C-suite had to go on a public apology tour, including Brock. "I do not condone child pornography, white supremacy, or racism in any shape or form," said the man who had a nice fireside chat with the internet's most notorious harassers, pedo creeps, and white supremacists. He also added that he "agreed to this AMA without doing my proper due diligence to understand the history and the controversy of the site," not realizing that any public relations guy in gaming who openly admits that he doesn't know where the Gamergaters hang out should be fired on the spot.

4

Mark Zuckerberg Turned A Flooded Puerto Rico Into A VR Advert

Mark Zuckerberg, the first successful AI program to run a Fortune 500 business, isn't known for his empathy. But that's ignoring his great contributions to humanity, like how he donated $1.5 million to Puerto Rico after the deadly Hurricane Maria ravaged the commonwealth. And all that he wanted in return was to turn these terrible scenes of devastation into his digital playground.

Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionWho better to test out your million dollar project on than a bunch of people who don't have food or water?

3

A Movie Lost Its Entire Box Office On A Stupid Contest

After half a million Marvel movies, everyone is now accustomed to seeing some vaguely enticing post-credit scene that tricks audiences into spreading fan theories and giving Disney free publicity. But in the '80s, that kind of audience manipulation was still being tested. And one movie didn't just overdraw its ambition, but also its bank account.

Million Dollar Mystery is a trash movie. Literally. Sponsored by Glad Bags, the 1987 movie was a 95-minute glorified commercial where nobody actors searched for treasure hidden in (you guessed it) brand new Glad trash bags. And if you're thinking: "You'd have to pay me to watch that garbage," the movie's infamous producer Dino De Laurentiis saw that coming. So at the end of the flick, one of the characters breaks the fourth wall and informs the viewer that there is still one more garbage bag with $1 million missing and that, if they picked up the clues throughout the movie, they could win all that filthy lucre.

Wikimedia Commons/TomwsulcerEmphasis on filthy.

2

IBM Encouraged Women To Get Into Tech By Hacking Their Hair Dryer

Ever since the first caveman published his manifesto on why cavewomen are genetically unfit to make fire, tech has been an awkward boys' club. But over the past decades, the industry has made efforts to better reach out to women and invite them into their male-dominated STEM workplaces. And for IBM, that meant telling them to prove their worth by tearing apart their precious hairdryers.

1

Fools Keep Flying Low Planes Over New York City

The most convincing argument against government conspiracies is meeting a government official. Do you really think that the people who can't even fix potholes or keep an affair covered up would ever be able to organize and hush up grand hoaxes? And if you think they're too dumb to hush up events, they're not much better at publicizing them.

In 2009, the White House PR department was having a whale of a time. President Obama was killing it in the polls and their recent campaign of patriotic pictures of Air Force One over the Grand Canyon had been a smash hit. So to keep the good times going, they decided to stick to the winning formula and have a similar photoshoot over another iconic US skyline: New York City. So with the US Air Force, the country's smartest strategists whose only job it is to make the people feel safe from air threats, they approved an Air Force One lookalike to do a low-hanging fly-by of the center of New York City. In the same decade as 9/11. Without warning the public.

Flickr/U.S. Embassy, JakartaIs it a bird? Is it a terrorist threat?