ADVERTISING, OPINION, PUBLIC RELATIONS
Google’s advertising mistake cost it US$100 billion. Who’s to blame?
TONY JAQUES - MARCH 17, 2023
When an advertisement goes terribly wrong who’s to blame? That surely must have been the question at Google after the launch of its new AI tool Bard.
An accompanying online advertisement showed the Chatbot wrongly answering a simple question, saying the James Webb Space Telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside the earth’s solar system when that milestone was truly claimed by the European Very Large Telescope in 2004.
While there were doubtless other contributing factors, share value of parent company Alphabet dropped by $100 billion, and lost further value next day.
As British astronomer Chris Harrison commented: “Why didn’t you fact-check this example before sharing it?” Which is a fair question. Maybe try Googling it?
Most advertising failures are not as costly, but whose job is it to prevent such mistakes from becoming reputational crises?
The advertising department seems to be the obvious answer, yet what about legal checking for compliance, or public relations checking for reputation risk, or brand management checking for stakeholder understanding?
Google’s advertising mistake cost it US$100 billion. Who’s to blame?
TONY JAQUES - MARCH 17, 2023
When an advertisement goes terribly wrong who’s to blame? That surely must have been the question at Google after the launch of its new AI tool Bard.
An accompanying online advertisement showed the Chatbot wrongly answering a simple question, saying the James Webb Space Telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside the earth’s solar system when that milestone was truly claimed by the European Very Large Telescope in 2004.
While there were doubtless other contributing factors, share value of parent company Alphabet dropped by $100 billion, and lost further value next day.
As British astronomer Chris Harrison commented: “Why didn’t you fact-check this example before sharing it?” Which is a fair question. Maybe try Googling it?
Most advertising failures are not as costly, but whose job is it to prevent such mistakes from becoming reputational crises?
The advertising department seems to be the obvious answer, yet what about legal checking for compliance, or public relations checking for reputation risk, or brand management checking for stakeholder understanding?
1 yr. ago
