Microsoft Changed its Mind About Kinect “Hacks” (Good PR)

This story is a little old but I had to write about it because I find it to be an excellent use of good PR.

The situation:

Months ago, during the holiday season of 2010, Microsoft released a product for their Xbox 360 gaming console called the Microsoft Kinect. It lets gamers make use of their whole bodies to play games and manipulate menus. It plugs into the Xbox via a USB connector and has a series of cameras built into it that tracks your position and motion in 3D space. What happened though is people not only bought the device to use with their Xboxes, but some very sophisticated computer users were able to “hack” the Kinect to get it to work on a normal PC.

“[…] someone wrote an open source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t protect by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor. The sensor […] has eyes and ears, and that’s a whole bunch of noise that someone needs to take and turn into signal,” said Microsoft program manager Alex Kipman.

As soon as Microsoft found out that the Kinect was being used for something other than what it was intended for, they started to threaten legal action against the people “hacking” the Kinect. This naturally started to upset a great deal of tech/game journalists, PC enthusiasts and gamers.

The interesting bit was that less than two weeks after Microsoft started threatening legal action, they actually changed their minds. They started to backtrack and say that they are now excited to see that people are so excited to use the Kinect in new ways so soon after it was released.

The PR Angle:

Microsoft saved their rear ends with their quick change of attitude. They were on the verge of permanently upsetting a great deal of people and potentially losing a lot of sales of their product but they avoided that scenario by embracing the actions of the mod community.

It may not be directly related, although many critics think it is, the Kinect has now become the fastest selling tech gadgets in history. They managed to sell 10 million units since last November which resulted in an average of 133,000 units sold every day. The unit has also officially made it into the Guiness world records book for this achievement.

“The sales figures speak for themselves,” said Gaz Deaves, Guiness’ gaming editor. “No other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, which is an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.”

Average users that are not in touch with what goes on the in the hacking community may have not heard of this story and would have bought the device regardless. It’s hard to think that since Microsoft decided to let people have at the Kinect freely, that the record sales are not related at all.

“Microsoft last month said it plans to release software that will allow developers to create a wide range of applications for Kinect. The Kinect SDK will launch this spring as a free download from Microsoft’s Web site,” said Paul McDougall of InformationWeek.

Nice quick PR recovery Microsoft.

PC World Source Article

InformationWeek Source Article

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Clearwire Customers Upset Over Broken Promises (Bad PR)

The situation:

Yesterday March 10, it was reported that Clearwire, one of the top internet service providers in the U.S., may have been engaging in exactly what it promised it wouldn’t do, and then some. 15 of the company’s customers have filed a lawsuit against Clearwire because they have not been providing the “high-speed internet” service they had promised. They are also charging customers early termination fees because they canceled their contracts due to unhappiness with the service. It is also said that Clearwire might be involved in a scheme that pulls in new customers that their network can’t support by promising services and not delivering on them.  They would be doing this in order to get more money to build up their infrastructure in the future.

In some cases customers were being throttled down to 256Kbps and were told that it was due to bandwidth caps, while others were told that bandwidth shaping was done only at certain parts of the day. Clearwire is now being accused of violating advertising and fair trade practices. The company’s transparency on what they can guarantee is putting them into big trouble.

The PR angle:

These accusations do not bode well for Clearwire. If the basis of the complaints end up being true, Clearwire will have been found lying to, and intentionally misleading  their present and future customers and violating advertising and fair trade practices.

Clearwire will have broken one of the cardinal rules for maintaining good and ethical PR by lying to its customers. It’s integrity will have been sacrificed for an attempted short-term gain. Companies need to take note that if you can’t provide exactly what you’re offering, then say so. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. Lying to your customers to get more money will eventually hurt you in the long run. Potential customers will see Clearwire as an untrustworthy company and will avoid signing up with them in fear that they won’t get what they signed up for. That is of course if those people even have more than one choice of ISP in their area. Which is a whole other story.

Again, if the allegations againts Clearwire are true, they should have just either admitted that they would have to slow down everyone’s speed in order to add more customers or just not add more customers at all. Clearing the early termination fee for customers wanting to leave would be a great way to start pleasing the critics.

We will have to wait and see how Clearwire reacts to these accusations and if they will try to mend any potential wrongdoing.

Source Article

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Verifone Calls Out Square (Bad PR)

The situation:

Square and Verifone have been in the news lately and it’s been making many people think twice about mobile credit card payments. Square is a start-up company that had a great idea to develop a credit card scanner that plugs into the headphone jack of a mobile phone. Verifone, who’s widely known for their credit card processing systems, called Square out Wednesday, March 9, and accused them of putting out a product that can and is being used to steal credit card numbers.

Verifone is concerned about the lack of encryption when scanning the card and how the data is transferred to the phone. It works similar to other credit card scanners where you input an amount, scan the card and then the transaction goes through. The part where there is no encryption is during the time the data is taken from the card and put into the phone for the transaction. This is much like the situation when you are at a restaurant and the waiter or waitress disappears with your card and then brings it back. During that time, the waiter or waitress has an opportunity to write down all of your credit card information. Does that stop you from paying by credit card at restaurants? No.

The CEO of Verifone posted a video on YouTube that explains and shows how credit card numbers can be stolen using the device. He also explains that a fake credit card scanner app had been created in less than an hour and then was sent to all the major credit card companies for comment.

The PR angle:

As stated above, Verifone called Square out on this “flaw” in their product. Was this really the best move for the image of Verifone? By calling out Square in such an unorthodox way, making a video specifically targeted at Square and showing a flaw that is inherent in all in-person credit card transactions, the CEO has left people seeing Verifone as the big established company trying to bully and squash the young vulnerable upstart.

People at Verifone should have done what other companies would have done and gone through private channels to get their point across. Their big mistake was publicly calling out Square and doing it in such an ostentatious manner. Now, every time Verifone is mentioned, people may only think about how they bully upstart companies to deter competition. It seems that Verifone is mostly concerned with Square undercutting its fees.

Where was Verifone’s PR help when they came up with the idea of handling this situation? It’s a big mistake that the CEO of Verifone may be apologizing for in the near future.

CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey responded to the accusations in an open letter which has been posted on the company’s website.

“Our partner bank, JPMorgan Chase, continually reviews, verifies, and stands behind every aspect of our service, including our Square card reader,” said Dorsey.

The video made by Verifone’s CEO is embedded below.

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Fresh Start

This is the first post of my newly redesigned blog. I’ve been interested in starting a new blog and have had many ideas on what to write about but could not stick to just one. Although I was happy with the content that was previously found here, it was not going in the direction that I wanted it to go professionally.

Being a college student at Cal Poly Pomona that will be graduating soon with a B.S. in communication, I decided it was time to start something new. Here on this blog I will be writing my own thoughts and analyzations on recent news stories that I find on the net that either show great examples of PR gone right or examples of horrible PR that should be avoided. I may also post other things that are closely related to the topics of public relations and communications.

This blog will hopefully not only give me practice for the future, but also be a great example of my work and knowledge of how the public relations world works. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I look forward to posting new and insightful content for you to read in the future.

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