BRAiNDamage: BenQ Shows Us 9/11 is Still Not Cool
Sunday, December 10, 2006 7:54In this case of BRAiNDamage, BenQ has superimposed the lead singer from MayDay (HK band) holding their latest dogtag MP4 in front of what what was a column of World Trade 1.
As covered on Gizmodo, Digg, Danwei, and SCMP, there have been some who have taken issue with the new campaign (only release in mainland China/ HK), and the company has now told international mangers to be more careful and “sensitive”.
When managers of this campaign thought it was ok to release a campaign like this only in China, but not in the U.S., that should have been a red light for executives at BenQ. … after all, the internet is a global phenominon and thanks in part to airplanes, people from the U.S. are able to travel quite compfrtably to almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.
Moral to the story: using images from 9/11, tsunami, or any other disaster (an made and otehrwise) is off limits in the corporate world where exploiting a disaster for dollars has yet to make the transition from crude to cool.