The Avengers In Real Life [PR Nightmare UPDATE]

Remember when that PR company made a lapse of judgment and tweeted 140 characters or less about their annoyance over the Duke Nukem Forever reception?  Those people lost their business with 2K Games, just like that. Ocean Marketing decided to step it up and go on a wild tirade against a customer, over his discrepancy with an Avenger controller pre order, manufactured by N-Control, I believe. For those unaware, these controllers make gaming easier and more accessible, by a series of pulleys and wires that pinpoint the accuracy on any controller. It’s pretty clever and people get really mad over using it, so you know it works.

 

Check out this obviously not fake review for the Avenger controllers. So not fake.

 

In the conversation that goes back and forth between the troubled customer and the company, it actually gets so bad that at some point other outlets, such as Penny Arcade get sucked into the vortex of pure hatred. Please go read the entire correspondence on their site, but be prepared to lose some holiday cheer.

The basics of the dispute are that the customer is aggravated his purchase won’t be there for the holidays, which is understandable. The company on their hand ultimately always has the last say, as it is their property. However, it’s the quickly downward spiral and asocial response of Ocean Marketing that is truly disturbing. Here’s a short excerpt of the tirade coming from Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing:

“You just got told bitch … welcome to the real internet check kotaku in 2 weeks when they are reviewing free PS3 Avengers we send them as well as G4 and all the other majors hell yeah , don’t forget to check Amazon, gamestop.com, play n trade , Myers , Frys and a ton of other local stores coming your way you think you speak for billions son your just a kid you speak for yourself no one cares what you think that’s why were growing and moving 20-50 thousand controllers a month. We do value our customers but sometimes we get children like you we just have to put you in the corner with your im stupid hat on. See you at CES , E3 , Pax East ….? Oh wait you have to ask mom and pa dukes your not an industry professional and you have no money on snap you just got told.”

 

 

I wish I could tell you I just wrote that, but no, this is an actual response. The mails go on and on and even Mike Krahulik, owner of Penny Arcade, gets involved and gets told off in a similar fashion with claims like: “Your sites amateur at best my son could put together a better site than yours and you run PAX ?? Wow , Ill put my marketing team on a smear campaign of you and your site and your emails.”

Again, in the end it’s the company that can decide what to do with a product, but this asocial berating of any grievance is just…douchey? If there is a better word to describe it, I have missed it at this point. But rather than merely being unprofessional, this borders on being socially unlawful behavior, strictly from a technical point. Props go to the customer for actually still giving the controller due credit and still wanting the company to do business, as seen in the correspondence.

It has recently been reported here that the madman of the hour, Paul Christoforo, has been let go and any ties with the man and any company are trying to be broken.

Many outlets and forums, such as NeoGAF, are a-brewing with this right now. Will you be purchasing anything from Ocean Marketing services ever again?

Update: Wow, the internet works fast, really fast. In just 24 hours, a Youtube spoof about the whole thing has already rice rocketed to fame by recapping the situation at hand. It even made me discover something called Lycos. All these years on the interweb and I didn't know. You can watch the video below, but please be aware that it uses the same coarse language and thus is filled with naughty words. It wouldn't even need to be this well done, if it wasn't for Christoforo tweeting the video himself, on one of many temporary accounts, for reasons only he can understand.
 

 

 

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed. (@Daavpuke)