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YourCar.ie ‘Silly Stuff’ – More Like ‘Incredibly Offensive Stuff’
You may have heard recent stories about a number of Merrill Lynch employees being fired for transmitting offensive material over the corporate E-mail system.
Well a thread over at Irish Webmaster Forum contains a link to a page on the website of YourCar.ie [please note that the page contains offensive material], an Irish on-line car dealership portal.
At first I thought that maybe the site had been hacked. But looking around the site it seems that the link to this page is in plain view in the footer on all pages with the anchor ‘Silly Stuff’.
In this day and age it is just breathtakingly stupid to post this type of material on a public website. On a corporate website belonging to a company selling cars for some of Ireland’s largest car dealers this has to count as a marketing cock-up of monumental proportions. Who is vetting the site content over there?
This company makes hay of the fact that they “won the Overall Marketing Award from The Marketing Institute of Ireland in 2005″ (see here). I wonder do the Irish Marketing Institute want to be associated with a company that hosts this kind of material?
Really not very clever marketing if you ask me. I would be interested to hear what others think about this?
[EDIT] I had been concerned that maybe their site had been hacked but I noticed this on the offending page:
Tell Your Friends About YOURCAR.IE
Why Not Make It Your Home Page??
Our job is to improve your day. Contact us and we will post your innermost thoughts, jokes etc.
All postings are at our discretion,
Crudity in any form will probably be posted!
Remember brevity is the soul of wit.
Come on give us your best shot…………….OH AND BUY A BLOODY CAR!!
Hmm….
[...] I have checked their site to see if it might have been hacked but to be honest it looks pretty much like they published this themselves. The link to that page is in the footer all over their site. Blog post already done If anyone cares to promote the post we can watch how this plays out. [edit] how long does the recent blog take to update Michele? link to blog post Search Engine Optimisation Ireland .:. Red Cardinal ยป YourCar.ie ‘Silly Stuff’ – More Like ‘Incredibly Offensive Stuff’ __________________ Search Engine Optimisation Ireland Industrial Cleaning Dublin Ireland [...]
Pingback by Worst Site of the week? - Page 3 - Irish SEO, Marketing & Webmaster Discussion — August 8, 2006 @ 8:51 pm
That is sick, sorry but that’s the true.
Comment by Louie — August 8, 2006 @ 8:53 pm
I thought this to be extremely funny; Good jokes, a differing approach to corporate life; Well done to people at yourcar for bringing some laughter into business, maybe some newer jokes though!
Comment by John Lepayes — August 26, 2006 @ 10:31 am
@John
Would you be happy for children to see that Simpsons image that was displayed at the top of the page?
TBH If your site is for the corprate market then it should be appropriate. I am all in favour of bringing laughter into business, but not at the expense of offending some of your customers.
I’m quite sure my mother wouldn’t want to see that Simpsons image and, considering she would be part of the demograhic many of those car dealers are targeting, I would have to consider that content inappropriate.
I wonder would all those nice Ford dealers share your views?
Comment by Richard Hearne — August 26, 2006 @ 10:44 am
[UPDATE]
@John
My apologies but I just checked the page in question and they seem to have removed quite a lot of content.
Most especially they have removed the image that previously was positioned at the top of the page which was the one that most people found offensive.
I will spare you the detail but I do have a cached version of their site that I spidered when writting this piece.
Comment by Richard Hearne — August 26, 2006 @ 10:47 am
I think its quite good, personally I cannot see what the problem is. I do object to people voluntarily appointing themselves as moral guardians. The authorities are there for that. Thats my opinion anyway.
Comment by Brian O Connell — September 7, 2006 @ 12:59 pm
On return from holiday I was horrified to see the developments to our silly stuf section. This was bad management on our part as too many people have had access to the content without proper direction. I have to take responsibility for this which I do. This matter has now been addressed. Mea Culpa. Apologies to anyone that may have been offended, that was certainly not our attention.
Comment by Pearce — September 7, 2006 @ 1:47 pm
Im getting this from it now…
ADODB.Field error ’800a0bcd’
Either BOF or EOF is True, or the current record has been deleted. Requested operation requires a current record.
/page.asp, line 30
No ASP error handling!
Comment by Killian — November 17, 2006 @ 10:42 am
What did I miss!? What did I miss!?
Comment by jobs (ivan) — October 8, 2007 @ 9:52 am