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?
DecorateMyEyes does this and is very effective at it, the article is here <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pag...</a> . 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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.