Morbid Marketing


Profiting from Amy's death - socially unacceptable or commercial necessity?

It's fair to assume that most people in the western world, through one source or another, will be aware of Amy Winehouse's sad demise last weekend. And whatever your opinions on Amy, her music or her lifestyle, it is non-the-less a tragedy that someone so young and talented should lose their life at such a tender age.

Yet some evidently see such an occurrence as a commercial opportunity there to be exploited.

I read today (Online Social Media article: Microsoft Says Sorry For Commercial Amy Winehouse Death Tweet) that somebody at Microsoft tweeted, shortly after the news broke, "remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking Back to Black album over at Zune" with a link to the Microsoft shop. Shockingly awful if you ask me.

Quite rightly they have been slammed by the public, prompting an outright apology. However it mentions further on in the article that Apple and Amazon both put an image of Amy ('in memory of') on their landing pages with the ability to link through to buy her music (though they didn't outright ask people to buy as Microsoft did), but appear to have avoided heavy criticism because of the whirlwind surrounding Microsoft.

Now I'm no fan of Microsoft, but surely the actions of Amazon and Apple are tantamount to the same thing. In fact there's an argument to say that their actions are worse as they will most likely have discussed the issue before tailoring their sites, where Microsoft fell foul of a stupid employee getting trigger happy?

Either way the question remains, is modern retail so cut-throat that companies needs to resort to this kind of behaviour - should we start to accept that this is just business? Or is it fair to expect companies to be more socially responsible....?

Andy

Footnote:
I have just noticed that Gareth Halfacree - @ghalfacree on twitter commenting on the same subject: "I love the fact that Microsoft gets jumped on for trying to profit from Winehouse's death - what about these? http://yfrog.com/kjrx2fzj"



Comments...

  • I agree that blatant attempts at cashing in are pretty disgusting, but these companies were also rightly predicting what would happen. When the death of a star occurs, whether Amy Winehouse or Michael Jackson, the public usually will go and download the music. If you think about it in a usability format, these sites have just made this music more accessible to the user. It might seem slightly insensitive, but people might think the opposite and say it would be disrespectful for them not to mark her death in any way.
    29/07/2011 00:00:00 by Hannah
  • True enough, and @gazinio commented that 'death is everyday, making money is everyday, why shouldn't the twain ever meet'. Fair point maybe?However I would argue that regardless of whether she brought it on herself, the fact remains that a family have just lost their daughter. Surely companies should be more tactful in their timing / approach. Usability wise, it's not difficult to find a singer / track / album on iTunes or Amazon really, yet their their approach was significantly more tactful than Microsoft's! I might add at this point that I'm no particular fan of AW, so I'm not getting all protective. Just got me wondering if I should see it as being acceptable behaviour or not...
    29/07/2011 12:07:22 by Andy

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