Center for Citizen Media Rotating Header Image

NBC Links Itself to Slaughter

cho.jpgNBC wasn’t wrong to put some of the grotesque Cho pictures and videos on the air and the Net. But it made a catastrophic marketing blunder in the process.

The New York Times reports today, “One aspect that clearly irritated many of NBC’s competitors was the impression of the logo ‘NBC News,’ which the network burned into every image from the material.” They should be quietly overjoyed relieved, not angry.

Why? Because NBC has loudly tied its brand to this psychopath’s ravings. People who remember the visual images will also remember NBC — not that the network had an exclusive but rather that the network spashed its own brand on top of nearly pure evil.

At least one employee at an NBC competitor understood this. According to the Times, Paul Friedman, vice president at CBS News, said, “It may backfire for them to be so closely associated with footage that makes people’s flesh crawl.”

3 Comments on “NBC Links Itself to Slaughter”

  1. #1 rexblog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » Blog Archive » NBC-branded horror
    on Apr 20th, 2007 at 11:58 am

    […] Gilmor explains it precisely: The decision to add a logo to the horrific images from Cho was a “catastrophic marketing […]

  2. #2 goudaille | olivier niquet
    on Apr 21st, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    […] Gillmor rapporte que certains médias se sont plaint de l’appropriation par NBC des images du tueur de […]

  3. #3 Patrick Ruffini :: links for 2007-04-22
    on Apr 22nd, 2007 at 4:25 am

    […] Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » NBC Links Itself to Slaughter (tags: branding media) […]