Vodafone New Zealand lies about Xperia Play shipment being stolen - outrage ensues

You know how you’ll often read stories in the free newspapers about people ‘running out of the cinema, screaming’ when a horror film is released?

Ever wonder who those people are, and why you never meet them in real life?

Welcome to the world of marketing: where a little bit of fibbing is okay as long as no-one gets hurt (and papers/websites report it).

Alas, a marketing stunt backfired for Vodafone in New Zealand today as it was forced to backtrack over a slightly larger porkie than a few people running scared by some rubbish film.

The company initially posted via Twitter that an entire shipment of Xperia Play handsets had been “stolen” thanks to a “Major security breach”, which naturally had a number of sites’ chins wagging and customers in the country deeply concerned.

Alas, shortly afterwards the firm then followed this up with clearly faked security footage of the ‘theft’ in action, before then admitting it was all just a big old ruse when everyone started mentioning the security breach in the same sentence as Sony’s recent PSN hack.

The stunt has garnered a lot of negative feedback on the YouTube comments thread of the video from customers understandably annoyed at being duped by a viral advertising campaign.

Of course, the fact that we’re reporting on it counts as a success in marketing terms. As Oscar Wilde quipped and all PR people vehemently believe, ‘there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’