

Ask HN: What if the Ocean Marketing fail was actually a brilliant move? - jchung

While the Ocean marketing debacle was clearly bad publicity for Ocean, I'd like to ask HN to consider what the effect was for N-Control - maker of the Avenger game controller. How many of you even knew what the Avenger game controller was before the Ocean blowup? Now, thanks to the enthusiastic words of Dave-the-excited-customer, we know not only what the Avenger is, but how thrilled Dave was to get two, how it will help disabled students all over the world, and that thousands of units have just arrived, presumably ready for your purchase.<p>I'm not literally suggesting that the Ocean fail was intentional, but consider the world where it was... In that world, I'd suggest the "fake fail" was executed PERFECTLY. The victim was outspokenly positive about the product, the fall-guy was disposable, and the whole story went viral. Everyone hates Ocean, feels a little bad for N-Control, and now knows about the Avenger.<p>Thoughts?
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kls
DecorateMyEyes does this and is very effective at it, the article is here
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pagewanted=all)
. The owner manipulates his rank on Google via bad publicity. So there are
people gaming the system like this, there is precedence that this behavior
works.

The fact is, in gaming customers will take a lot of abuse, it is evident in
the email exchange where the customer Dave I think his name was does not
cancel his order. So the risk of driving away customers that want this product
is probably small, given that the recipient of the abuse still wanted the
merchandise. Where in most other industries a customer would say you know what
cancel my order. Sony's antics are further proof that some gamers have a high
threshold for abuse. So given that there is a high upside for publicity with a
low downside of canceled orders over the fiasco. Given that it is a third
party, they can dispose of them and claim that they are innocent. I am not
saying this is what happened but it cannot be ruled out.

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jchung
Interesting. I wonder if there's a way to assess the "pliability" of my
customer base. To borrow your phrase: how much "abuse" will a certain customer
segment take?

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a_a_r_o_n
Probably related to how unique your product is.

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pensiveye
I think you will find most people don't walk away from this with a full
understanding of who is to blame. Instead, many may create a sub-conscious
linkage with the Avenger and a bad customer service story. It's easy to create
perceptions and difficult to remake them.

Maybe it does work well for N-Control this time....but a strategy? I'd like to
hear what marketing professionals would say, but it sounds much too risky for
me.

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coryl
Also consider that their listing on Amazon has been flooded with "bad" reviews

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jchung
That's true. Would likely negate the upside of customer awareness if the first
thing they learn upon researching the product is that it has 1 star.

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gjvc
nah. the victim was keen like a gamer (not over-keen).

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jchung
I think that's fair. I don't think it was intentional either. But my question
is what the implications are for other companies looking for publicity. Is
there a strategy there to emulate? (e.g., find some fool willing to be the
fall-guy like Paul from Ocean)

For the record, I'm not condoning such behavior - if anything, I'm interested
in exposing such intentional strategies as dishonest. But awareness must come
before defense.

