This phrase cracks me up. Both because that’s what he did, and because it implies the surreal contortions he pushed himself through to do it. I’ve been thinking about why this story went viral and is so interesting, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Christoforo embodies so much of what we’ve been debating here at QT3: the garden variety Internet troll and flame warrior. He verbally attacks people with little to no provocation, is unwilling to back down no matter what happens, and even has the characteristic poor grammar and typing.
The two key differences with Christoforo that make this story so interesting are that 1) he’s not hiding behind the typical veil of Internet anonymity, and 2) he’s doing this all in a real world context --not an ultimately harmless messageboard thread, but in an actual business with money and products and different social contracts.
It’s like if we were kids and we were dumbfounded to find the Boogey Man from under our bed working as a cashier at the grocery store. …And then Santa Claus comes crashing in and suplexes him into a display of canned vegetables.
ShivaX
2982
This might be the greatest mental image in the history of ever.
Aeon221
2983
http://thebloggess.com/category/marketing-gone-bad/
This is a reasonable response to a shitty PR firm. The PA one was not.
Mr.GRIM
2984
If people do not know that your product even exists, they cannot, and will not buy it. By raising product awareness, you give yourself a chance to sell product to those people. Yes it’s generally negative attention, but that attention is mostly focused upon the service aspects of the product and a certain individual.
The email exchanges (both the recent and past ones from June) demonstrate that the customer wanted and was happy with the product itself. I don’t expect pre-orders to take off, but I see more hardware coverage on the product itself happening in the wake of this story, as people take interest.
The Jack’ in the box isn’t really a good analogy, people are not getting sick or dieing when they use the controller.
How is the PA one a shitty response? All he did was post the guy’s emails.
I posted a link to a blog post where Christoroids acted the same way to a customer last summer. He was always going to act that way. I could smell the Axe and see the Affliction t-shirt before I ever saw a picture of the guy.
I saw a Youtube video of him last night actually trying to demo the product in question, and he comes off like a real idiot.
Reldan
2987
That guy makes me picture Denzel Washington’s character from Training Day.
Both Gabe and the Bloggess pointed their gun and pulled the trigger. Hell, the Bloggess was even more direct than Gabe when she said she wanted her fans to give the guy some shit. The difference is that the Bloggess (and I am an occasional reader) has a fanbase slightly different than Gabe’s. To continue my colorful allusion, the Bloggess has a gun filled with confetti and Etsy merchandise while Gabe’s gun is filled with rabid dogs bred on DGH and PCP. Gabe never directed his minions to tear the guy’s life apart, but rabid dogs don’t roll over.
The only thing Gabe’s done that’s made me roll my eyes was his ridiculous tweet about burning down his house or whatever. “AND WHEN PAUL CHRISTOPHORO HAS HAD ENOUGH OF DOG RAPE HE WILL LOOK UP AND SHOUT MIKE YOU HAVE THE POWER AND I WILL WHISPER NO!”
ShivaX
2989
Only no ones ever heard or cares about any of that.
Hell it doesn’t even sound like Jose “What a Fucking Bitch” lost his job, just got reprimanded. Plus I doubt she has the following of Penny Arcade. What she didn’t wasn’t all that different and given that the “PR Firm” was actually “Paul and nobody else” anything that referenced them would lead directly to Paul and his name and the rest of it.
What Mike did wasn’t much different than what she did, he just has a bigger following and Paul is a one man company, whereas Jose actually was part of a bigger organization. And Jose wasn’t as much of a prick or as clueless about his industry.
Yeah, I didn’t think that Dave’s emails were out of line or anything. He was obviously a bit frustrated and pissy, but for good reason. And it’s not like he was making unreasonable demands–he wasn’t even all that mad about not getting the controller before Christmas, he just wanted them to be up front with him about when he was going to receive it. Considering that he paid for it in full and the company missed their publicized release date, I think that was a perfectly reasonable question.
Offering the discount to people that hadn’t pre-ordered was also a terrible idea, especially considering that the pre-orders were already running late. A competent PR firm would have advised them not to do that.
Based just on Dave’s e-mail chain and the other that has been linked to, it also looks like Ocean/N-Control had a (very) bad habit of billing people before shipping. In the case of the other linked thread, months before shipping.
The only reason I don’t feel that bad for N-Control in this situation is that a year after the other linked person’s experience was made public, they still had Ocean handling PR and distribution. Even as Brandon (earlier referenced as Josh, oops) Liebman (Leiderman? Whatever) was saying that his PR company would no longer be doing business with N-Control due to Paul Christophoro’s attitude, N-Control still stuck with him.
“Oh hey this controller looks sorta cool, think I’ll check if it’s on Amazon.”
checks review scores
“Oh. Well, maybe someone will make a better version of it!”
Not to mention this is how Popehat refers to the controller:
a ludicrous-looking X-Box 360 controller
Yes that will have it flying off the shelves! As will being banned from every major tech expo on Earth.
Marketing and customer service are industries which require patience and the ability to not take things personally. You need to be both firm and yet charismatic enough that you can defuse ugly situations while finding solutions that benefit both your customers and your client/company. It’s extremely difficult to find people with this talent. Unfortunately Maketing and Customer Service tend to attract just the opposite, as this Paul Christoforo idiot exemplifies all too well.
This comment from his Twitter page borders on criminally liable :
Dear Paul, you are not Charlie Sheen. You’ve already ruined whatever reputation you might have been able to salvage in the Marketing industry, and now you’ve set yourself up to be criminally responsible should even a single customers credit card information be misused in some way. Way to go champ.
I suspect the small company behind the Avenger controller will suffer for their association with Mr. Christoforo, and that is a shame. Chances are he was all smiles and charm when pitching his one-man Marketing firm for the job of representing N-Control, and they had no way of knowing how completely unprepared and unsuitable he was for the job. The controller looks like something that could bring a lot of benefits to disabled gamers (in addition to be a great custom controller for hard core FPS enthusiasts) and they shouldn’t have to suffer because they were misled into hiring Mr. Christoforo’s “firm” to represent them.
Dean
2996
I think that was from the parody twitter account.
By the way, the inventor of the controller and Paul of Oh Shun Mraketoong are business partners. So, you know, fuck 'em.
Oh hey and look it’s defective.
Capitalism is cut hroat doge at dog.
Words to live by. I’d hate to have my hroat cut by a dodging dog.
What’s weird is that the thing was apparently created to help disabled kids play games, but all their webpage talks about is how it makes you way radder at Call of Duty.
That’s not so weird, it’s actually fairly competent marketing. Disabled kids playing video games is a very niche market. While the original intent was likely to provide them with the controller, marking it as a way to up your frag count to rabid FPS fanboys is a good way to insure you make enough money to get the thing into the hands of that niche market you originally intended to serve.
I would have to assume that the decision to market it that way was made by the decent marketing firm N-Control had on retainer prior to engaging Mr. Christoforo.
Personally I don’t think PA took this too far at all. This guy was a complete prick to a customer who had already paid money for a product he wasn’t receiving. In addition, he’d already been publically called out for being a dick on a previous occasion. Maybe N-Control should share some blame, as apparently they knew they had a one-man marketing firm handling all customer inquiries, which is a pretty dumb move no matter how you look at it. The end result was a marketing and PR fiasco, which then went viral when it was inevitably brought to the attention of the internet.
PA isn’t destroying this guys life. Angry PA readers are certainly making social media life difficult for the guy right now, and chances are that the fallout from this will completely destroy any career in PR and Marketing this guy might have had (assuming clients know how to use Google), but hey, he brought that on himself, good riddance to someone who gives the entire industry a very public bad name. It’s not like he can’t change his cell number, wait about a month for all this to be forgotten, then re-register on social media and post pics of his new job selling supplements at GNC. Maybe in the end Mr. Christoforo will learn a lesson from all of this, but it’s highly doubtful.
