9/11/13 – never forget what AT&T did

I saw this on 9/11/13 and was pretty amazed that their marketing department could be so dense as to not realize this was not going to be received well in any way shape or fashion.

Didn’t really go off much on it then, but since I have not really seen a lot of commentary on it, mostly due to them pulling the ad and subsequent tweets, here’s a quick summary of what happened.

AT&T posts an image (shown here,) of one of their phones taking a picture or video, and rather clearly so, of the spot where the World Trade Center towers used to be.

At about an hour and a half of commentary about how tacky and disgusting it was to put an advertisement for their phone or service up on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, AT&T issued an apology that read along the lines of “oh, sorry you interpret it that way and got all offended and stuff, we certainly didn’t see it that way.”

You can see that heartfelt apology here, along with several people jumping ship.

I’ve got to admire the marketing department that thinks “let’s associate ourselves with a national tragedy, and then respond to people who find it offensive by telling them you were paying respects to the victim’s families,” it’s just the kind of insanity that makes you realize how absolutely disconnected AT&T is from reality. I’m kind of amazed they didn’t come back with “why do you hate the victims so much?” as their next tweets. Maybe they did and deleted them. Who knows.

Not that the other carriers are without fault, this is just something I ran across and it’s easy pickings, which is what I’m after after having slept about five hours in the last two days. That and I’d like people to not forget what AT&T did, since they’ve worked pretty darn hard at sweeping it under the carpet.

Taste, it’s not required to run a multibillion dollar business