Samsung's buffalo PR disaster

Chris Norton 0:00

And this show is obviously all about fuck-ups and you've sent one through about when you were working for Samsung , although you did say you have quite a few for Samsung , so this was quite interesting . So tell me the story of how the hell Samsung was involved with a buffalo And this show is obviously all about fuck-ups and you've sent one through about when you were working for Samsung, although you did say you have quite a few for Samsung, so this was quite interesting . So tell me the story of how the hell Samsung was involved with a buffalo . yeah , when I was kind of racking my brains when we were talking about kind of what we would sort of talk about in the kind of fuck-up , the PR for a fuck-up thing , I like , yeah , I was really racking my brains and there was like working , working for in Australia for a big tech company could be pretty crazy . Like you know , you're making really like cutting-edge products . You're getting them out all the time . Like you know , you're making really like cutting edge products . You're getting them out all the time . Like you know , there was a lot of experiential marketing and things so like . So basically I mean , this is a kind of like a general fuck up . I still think back to whether this was me or whether I missed an email . Yeah , yeah , I honestly don't think I . I don't think I was told this is what I . I went , I went back through my emails but basically it turned out that our and and it turned out that I think the global team at samsung were doing a shoot , uh for a global ad campaign in Sydney in a like it was like Centennial Park maybe

Discovering the runaway buffaloes

Chris Norton 1:30

. And like , yeah , like myself and my team and , in fairness , like our marketing team , like no one at Samsung Australia sort of knew about it .

Chris Norton 1:40

I happen to be at our PR agency , the brilliant sort of Edelman in the center of Sydney , and how I found out about it was I got a call from a journalist colleague . Well , a journalist friend or someone I'd like to certainly worked with and and traveled with a bit on junkets since I'd been there . It's called Daniel from Channel 10 . He called me and was like do you know anything about a Samsung video , like ad shoot that's gone wrong in this park ? And I was like , no , what are you talking about ? We're not doing any shoots at the moment . And like , meanwhile , I was sort of like on the phone , like frantically , like gesturing to my Edelman colleagues , being like get on the new , like check the news , check everything . And he was like , well , because , um , basically there was an animal handler , there were two buffaloes , uh in the park and still to this day have no idea what the creative was . And you know they have . The link is with water buffaloalos . Yeah , I know I still to this day don't know what it was . I assume it never went to market in Korea . So , yeah , it was for the Korean market and I mean , if you're ever in Korea , the ads are like incredibly creative but like pretty wild . So anyway , the animal handler lost control of the buffaloes that went charging off down the street in Sydney and into a suburb called Newtown which has like a great high street it's called King Street in Newtown . And so I mean , like shopkeepers were like why are the two fucking buffalo like charging down ? So anyway , this was being recounted to me .

Chris Norton 3:26

The television was going on in the meeting room that I was in while I was on the phone

Managing the media fallout

Chris Norton 3:30

to the journalist and like there was like a helicopter shot and I I sort of said like it's like why do you ? Yeah , I know it was truly like , like , like , yeah , I'm sort of sweating thinking about it . And I was like why do you ? I don't know anything about this and I genuinely didn't . I was like I don't know anything about this , I don't think this is something what has even made you call me . And he was like well , I kind of like you know , we saw a group of you know Asian , like a lot of the crew , who were sort of Asian , and they were last seen fleeing the park in a golf buggy . And again , I was a bit like you know like with the Southeast Asia is a big area . You know , we're talking Japan . It's like it could be anyone . Anyway , if I hear anything I'll let you know and I put the phone down . I was like this has this has our company hallmarks all over it . So in the end we just we just formed a room . I spoke to our head of marketing , I spoke to our head of marketing , we were on the phone to Korea .

Chris Norton 4:48

In the end we started to kind of like track down the people who were involved in the shoot , who'd kind of like fled the scene , and I sent my PR manager to their hotel to sort of prevent them leaving , because the media were like scouring the neighborhood to try and find anyone involved , the neighborhood to try and find anyone uh , involved . Eventually , the fire brigade were called uh , and the buffaloes were cornered , um , in someone's like backyard , I think it was

Lessons from corporate communication breakdown

Chris Norton 5:10

um . So it's really dangerous . They're like really aggressive . It could have , it could have been it could have been , really nobody was hurt . No one was hurt . Um , like , do you know what I I can't even remember , it was like 10 years ago now like whether , like , we ended up sort of like issuing a , like a statement about I'm sure we must have done in terms of like , um , accepting responsibility .

Chris Norton 5:36

But there is something about australia like doing PR and white marketing in Australia . It's quite . They call themselves larrikins , they're quite . It's like quite a funny media market . You can have a lot of fun with Australian journalists and you know , like , as long as no one's hurt . And so it sort of became like quite a memeable story . It became the sort of like piece at the end end , like at the end of the like , the news that was like and what else happened in sydney today , kind of thing . So it was . I mean , it was certainly , it was certainly a lucky escape .

Chris Norton 6:11

But , um , you know , even like , whenever you work at like , as I've done for a couple now for big organizations , it is amazing how teams don't talk to each other . I guess I was trying to when I was thinking about what to talk about . I'm not quite sure what the learning is , because sometimes in big organizations , a lot of the times the left arm doesn't know what the right arm is doing . Yeah , it can be a bit silent just from the , the , the sheer size , um , but certainly my , my personal learning that I've taken on is , like you know , if I'm , if , if anything , if I'm doing anything in france , the local team in france have to know about it . Like , like , don't ever do anything in a , in a town , or if you have , like you know , a sales team in and that could work in even a UK business , if you've got , like a sales team based in Leicester , like , make sure they know if you're in Leicester . Like it really

The importance of informing local teams

Chris Norton 7:13

, yeah , it really is like over inform , don't just sort of assume , because that was an example of like you know they were korean speakers , that like there was no connection .

Chris Norton 7:25

So my team managed to pick it up and handle it and and sort of deal with the media . But we were starting from such a position of like , is this us ? Could we have done this ? Could , could this have happened ? I love the way that is the animal handler , the animal handler lost control . It's like you've got one jaw , literally , you've got one jaw . Yeah , you have Hold on to the wild buffalo .