Those must be …Bad Idea Jeans

This week, two very interesting marketing experiments blew up in the faces of those who decided to launch…

First – Real launches a blog – Freedom of Music which was a valiant effort to stick it to Apple in order to open the iPod to support Harmony and the Real music store. Too bad they forgot most people don’t really like them from past marketing and crappy product efforts. With comments enabled, the blog was besiged by Apple Zealots. Comments had to be disabled and of course the efforts are now serioulsy hindered since everyone is talking about it. Good try, but not sure how any other result would have been reached based on history. The brand was nowhere near strong enough to demand the support of users, haters or a general public in a fight against something as strong as Apple’s…

Second… In support of the new Resident Evil game, someone at Capcom decides to (perhaps just approve the Agency’s decision to) spam mobile users with an SMS looking like a virus. I get the idea that it ties back to the game, but spam and virus??? hello….

It’s great to try and track with the trends, but don’t lose focus on basic common sense. Know the limits of the idea before it breaks and possibly breaks you.