I do not breathe your politics
"Comment is free but facts are sacred." (C.P. Scott)
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Apology, schmapology
So, Tom at plasticbag.org got an 'apology' from someone in the loosely agglomerated marketing sludge that surrounds Cilit Bang, for the fake post that purported to be sharing in his happiness at contacting his dad, but really was just a link to a fake blog selling the cleaning product with the name that sounds like a BDSM practice.
He's leaving it, mostly, at that, and for that I applaud him, but as Harry Shearer might say, check out the apology, ladies and gentlemen. A work of public non-apology art. Let's go through it line by line:
We are writing to you in response to the Barry Scott posting on 30th September 2005. We're all aware that Barry Scott, the advertising character is a marketing creation and we have been responsible for raising his awareness.What follows will make us look bad, so here's a quick bit of marketing about us. The posting on 30th September was unplanned and an error of judgement and we unequivocally apologise for this. We recognise that it was inappropriate in context.We seem to be giving you the impression that we're responsible, but don't get too attached to that, because we're going to muddy it a little. The Barry Scott character has appeared in a number of spoof websites and weblogs, created by people unconnected to the Reckitt Benckiser brand.We can't really say we didn't do it, because we're apologising. We just want to make sure that when someone googles your blog, they see this careful misdirection. The weblog posting on your site was not endorsed by Reckitt Benckiser or any of the advertising agencies that are mentioned and was a one off error from which lessons have been learnt.It did originate from one of them, but we're trying to take your eye off that. We are sorry for any offence it has unwittingly caused.Now, this is really cute. We apologise for what it did. Not for the crass, stupid actions of the person who typed it. Because that would be like responsibility, and privately we're still joking about it when we snort a bit of Kate in the toilets. We would like to have an opportunity to apologise personally, if you would like to speak to us please do let us know the best way to reach you.We recognise that this utter horseshit isn't really impressing you, and we'd like a chance to privately eat crow before you write a Guardian article about it. Yours sincerely, The Cillit Bang teamI'm too ashamed to put my name below this. posted by Michael at 10/05/2005 01:18:00 AM |