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. 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 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 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, 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.