Microsoft marketing heads fail with Bing earthquake ploy
We know marketing people are quite often driven types but you have to wonder what was going through those heads at Microsoft when they decided that the Japanese earthquake was an opportunity.
The software giant offered to make a US$100,000 donation for quake victims on the condition Twitter users retweeted the hash-tag of Bing, Microsoft's internet search engine. For every retweet, Microsoft said it would donate US$1 up to US$100,000.
Six hours later, after a barrage of complaints from tweeters that the company was exploiting the earthquake by marketing its search engine, the company had this to say: 'We apologise the tweet was negatively perceived. Intent was to provide an easy way for people to help Japan. We have donated $100k.'
Even the apology doesn't ring entirely true - presumably it was just too painful to donate the money without getting a bit of a bang for their buck. Another master class from Microsoft.
Budgeting for beauty