Every now and again, some company has the brilliant idea to put a major marketing campaign in the hands of online voters. Maybe they think they’re being clever by outsourcing their jobs to the public. Maybe they think their product and reputation is so universally liked that no one would dare try to tarnish it. In any case, no one probably bothered to tell them the Internet is populated by trolls who love nothing more than to sow seeds of discord by posting inflammatory remarks and disrupting the way things are supposed to work.
But maybe we should be thankful that there are so many uniformed companies out there who are willing put their companies future in the hands of people who would just as soon watch it burn than help it succeed. Because without them, we wouldn’t have any of the hilarious results from these naming contests that failed miserably.
10. Polar Research Ship Naming Contest
A British government agency has become the latest group to see what happens when you ask the internet to unleash its collective creative energies. Rather than voting for the more dignified names like Endeavour, Shackleton, or Falcon, which were suggested by the Natural Environment Research Council, the users of the web instead took great joy in offering up and voting for the most ridiculous names they could think of for the government funded project. Among those was an entry from James Hand who laughingly suggested the name “Boaty McBoatface” and was surprised to see it garner so many votes. Though the contest recently came to a close with the RRS Boaty McBoatface looking like it was going to beat out the other names, the research council sponsoring the contest hasn’t yet stated if they would honor the internet’s decision.
http://www.citynews.ca/2016/03/21/trending-when-internet-naming-contests-go-wrong/ Via CTVNews.ca