“Research In Motion can’t catch a break. A tweet sent out Wednesday meant to promote its BlackBerry brand has backfired on the Canadian company, with many people using the campaign to bash RIM’s phones,” Salvador Rodriguez reports for The Los Angeles Times.
Rodriguez reports, “The company tweeted from its @BlackBerry account ‘Fill in the blank: BlackBerry helps me ________.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Uh oh. Amateur Hour hasn’t quite ended, yet.
Rodriguez reports, “However, many of the people who responded didn’t find BlackBerry too helpful. ‘Realize how thankful I am for my #iPhone,’ said one user, in one of the tamest yet worst responses RIM could have received… Mentions of the iPhone showed up in various iterations as a response to the campaign, which RIM actually paid Twitter to promote. Among the iPhone mentions were: ‘Appreciate my iPhone,’ ‘Realise (sic) that I want an iPhone,’ ‘Blackberry helps me be thankful for my iPhone,’ and last but not least, ‘@BlackBerry Helps me ENVY … my friends with iPhones!'”
“‘Helps me by… laying off 5000 awesome people that I can hire. #riskytwittercampaigns,’ said another user, highlighting RIM’s recent woes,” Rodriguez reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well now, that went even better than expected. 🙂
Hey, have some respect for the walking dead, you people!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TheloniousMac” for the heads up.]
Anyone with any Internet smarts whatsoever would know that under the circumstances this is asking for it. If you toss out crap you’re going to attract flies. With the company under so much negative publicity at the moment, disaster was an easy prediction.
Apple is highly thought of in the world and I guarantee had they done something similar, it would have become mecca for Apple haters within an hour.
Whoever that marketing specialist is should be fired. FIRED! FIRED! SHOT THEN FIRED! (Just trying to feel a bit like Steve.)
Yeah this is real pie-in-the-face stuff Soupy Sales would be proud of, with an exploding cigar for good measure. Wah, wah, waaaaaaah… Hilarious!! Must be the same marketing guy who was responsible for JOHN CARTER at Disney, may his career RIP.
As any lawyer would tell you…. NEVER ask a question unless you know what the answer is going to be….
Do this in-house and ask your people to be a pain. See what you get. Then think again about it.
Amateur hour indeed. 🙂
I’m sure they did do that in-house. Problem is, corporate culture shelters and even nurtures bad ideas, especially when battlements are threatened, loyalties are tested, and authority is eroding.
And so, clear thinking falls to political and emotional expedients.
We’ve been able to smell the panic for months now. Hysteria is just around the corner.
This is yet another imprudent action arising from human failings fully exposed in the turmoil surrounding the fall of a giant. Or, it could be just plain stupidity.
” ‘Realise (sic) that I want an iPhone.” That is not a spelling error outside the US.
Well, it is among English-speaking folks of Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, China, Japan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, the Seychelles, Israel, and Kazakhstan (I know of by first-hand experience).
No it’s not. It’s correct English. If some of your American spelling folks in those countries choose to use the American version that’s fine. It doesn’t make ‘realise’ a spelling mistake.
It was being reported by the LA times. The LA times added the “(sic)” because it’s an American Newspaper and since they publish in America it was important for their readers in America to realize that the LA Times didn’t misspell the word. If the LA Times had spelled it that way, it would be a misspelling, therefore the “(sic)”.
Really. Americans need to adjust themselves and bow down to their true lingual heritage.. English. There is no such thing as American English, it’s simply badly spelt English.
…and the extra syllable in aluminum comes from? No one speaks (or spells) “English”, anywhere.
It’s spelled aluminium in the Uk, hence the extra syllable.
Well hell, the dumb asses can’t even spell, let alone talk. Hey, how do they pronounce lieutenant?
@Fish’n’Chips, you can harp about lieutenant after you explain why America didn’t fix “colonel” from being pronounced like a piece of corn (kernel).
Mind you it’s good that Americans pronounce lieutenant in correct French (lieu tenant, meaning “in lieu of someone holding a position of authority”).
@ mossman: I was just being a smartass with my comment and didn’t really mean it. I have nothing but respect for our British allies, although I still haven’t forgiven them for burning our capital. That was just wrong.
Need I remind you that the American president, George W Bush (whom you should all be embarrassed of), said: “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” That sums you up.
This is just too funny.
While we are at it, they also spell “Solder” as “Sodder”. I assume because soldering an electronic part onto a board reminds them of sodding (???!!). I don’t knoooowwww…..just guessing.
Taken out of context you miss the humor that was intended.
I sometimes make the mistake that the only French word anyone really needs to learn is surrender.
BTW, I didn’t explain that clearly enough. You should be embarrassed for propagating lies.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.asp
“That sums you up.”
Sorry, no that sums him up. It has nothing to do with the rest of America or Americans. We are a very diverse group of people.
That’s okay. We’re still being embarrassed by “We’re going to punish our enemies” (referring to American citizens) Obama.
We’re used to it.
Charles de Gaulle once said that the genius of the French language is that the words are in the order that they naturally occur to the mind, as in “je n’ai pas le lui donné”, or I not have not it him given. One thinks in a language, so the language dictates the order in which the words naturally occur to the mind.
At a soccer match, German president Heinemann once said to Queen Elizabeth, “Equal goes it loose,” to mean “Gleich geht es los.”
I told an Englishman, “Let’s get into the elevator.” He said it was a lift. I said it was an elevator. He said, “We invented the language.” I said, “We invented the elevator.” In the US, lifts are for freight and elevators are for passengers. Otis invented the later and called it an elevator.
This isn’t about who speaks english better or were the english language originated (it actually originates from German). It’s about clarity for the reader in the country where you publish. I would expect a british publication to put “sic” after color (as opposed to colour) if they happen to be quoting an American english speaker. It lets the readers in the native country of the publication know they’re aren’t just misspelling something. Sic doesn’t mean, this is spelled wrong. It just means this is quoted exactly even if you don’t think this is how this should be spelled (more or less).
Well said, and also the English language is a mutt language that belongs to both the Americans and the English (and people who gain it from either country). It is not some “purist” elite language, it certainly has evolved in the past 200 years, who is to say that which evolution of the language is the “correct” version of the mutt language? A bit presumptuous.
Both are correct.
Can we go back to taking the piss out of Americans again?
I disagree. The English language belongs to Canada, where we have the perfect blend of UK English, American English and Franglais.
Having read identical newspaper articles and fiction stories in both London and the US, I can tell you that British publishers are notorious for changing the spelling whereas quotes or stories from Commonwealth authors published in US magazines of repute are left as the author spelled them.
The US often does the reverse for measurements. Recently a US pop-sci publication did a straight conversion of new estimates of dinosaur weights to imperial, without sourcing the original metric value. This led to comments from American readers calling into question the scientists and how they could have possibly calculated it to such precision.
. . . and the English measuring system. You know, the one England doesn’t use anymore.
Well, seeing as how the LA Times, in a daily publication that takes a week to read through, and weighs about the same as a PowerBook, can barely manage one page of news outside LA, let alone the US or the rest of the world, it’s hardly surprising they have no clue how English, (the language that English people took to America when they discovered it and settled it)*, is used in other countries that haven’t yet gone entirely over to US spelling.
Having said that, some US spellings are Old English, dating back to Elizabethan times; Fall, instead of Autumn, being one such.
*John Cabot, from Bristol, was the first modem European to set foot on North American soil, Columbus never did, he only landed in the Caribbean, thinking it was near India or Indonesia, hence ‘West Indies’
Loser.
So you don’t think the Vikings were modern Europeans. I get it.
How do you feel about the Portuguese fishermen who told John Cabot how to get to present day Newfoundland?
We can’t stop watching the train wrecks.
I swear I thought the exact same thing earlier when I was reading Balmers comments.
OMG, I’m dying here that’s some funny shit.
Really, no way in hell someone could have made this stuff up.
Priceless! 🙂
You country boys in MDN Hicksville not learnt to spell yet. Didn’t you realise you have a worldwide audience who actually spell things correctly in the Queen’s English.
Yes I do believe that’s the language you are writing in and speaking
Sic denotes an error by the original author. I am sure this was never wrong just your misinterpretation of American only comments. Maybe you just don’t realise how offensive that was. You’ll be telling us how to spell colour next ;0)
Oh, so much fodder for the grammar police. “not learn to spell yet”? Not yet learnt to spell. If this be humor, make sure you don’t mix metaphors. Ya see, us ignorant colonists get easily confused! Oh, and you’re welcome for your iPhone. Sir Branson’s Virgin didn’t quite pull yer wanker, huh?
humour. Try and keep up
Actually, on your left! Just passed you!
You mean the iPhone designed by Sir Ive?
By the way, “….didn’t quite pull yer wanker”, is not the way we speak slang, it is the way only an American thinks we speak slang. Just like you think Aluminum is correct and Aluminium is….er…well you didn’t even know about Aluminium.
MDN didn’t write that. They copied it from the original article which I’m sure you all read.
An Andrew Jackson quote says: “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.”
The fact is that until the 19th century spelling was pretty flexible, as long as you could recognize the word.
“MacDailyNews Take:
Hey, have some respect for the walking dead, you people!”
Who are you calling “you people”? 🙂
It’s called Schadenfreude. I remember a classic post that ‘…MDN was 99% fuelled by it’ or words to that effect.
Anyone remember?
fuelledfueled. There is a hard and fast stylistic rule that states in essence that if you have a two-syllable word whose final syllable is in the form of “el” and pronounced “uhl,” you don’t double the final consonant. As in: signal, signaled; shovel, shoveler; towel, toweling; model, modeled; travel, traveler.Actually, that rule doesn’t apply in UK English. It’s ‘fuelled’, ‘traveller’, and so on here. Of course, neither version is ‘correct’, or rather each of them is in their own setting. As for speakers of English as a second language, I know many who use British orthography…
Oh, and while we are at it, the US spelling and pronunciation of ‘aluminum’ is actually older than the UK ‘aluminium’. Humphrey Davy discovered the metal in the early 19th century, and first called it ‘alumium’, later changing it to ‘aluminum’ and then ‘aluminium’. The second version stuck in the US.
My favorite tweet: “blackberry helps me ___”…make money by shorting their stock.
That’s harsh, but really true, which makes it even more awesome.
BlackBerry helps me . . .
. . .Make my favorite pie ever! (Sorry Apple). 😉
You know, working and playing in bands, you have the chance to make a recording. (In the 90’s we called it a CD) The thing that was always looked at: Naming the album. You never named it something that could easily be changed or mimicked into something else by the haters. [Think Spinal Tap when they named the album Shark Sandwich, and the 2 word review: SHIT SANDWICH]
How the hell could a college educated (Assuming) PR person suggest this?
The criticism of RIM’s products holds truth, the company is too slow to react, failing to innovate, even when it acquired QNX, a mobile OS that has been around for years. It’s not like RIM has to reinvent the wheel. Even with a pre-made QNX toolset, RIM still failed to produce a decent phone on time. Friends, coworkers, and family have already gone to iPhones, and I will do the same after hearing the BB10 won’t be available until next year. Thorsten Heins is a meathead, and is only good in bluffing and inaction.
“Blackberry phone helps me ___realized that stupid people can be CEOs at RIM.”