Brilliant PR stunt or honest mistake from new anonymity app?

A PR person promoting a new anonymous feedback app has accidentally leaked the email addresses of all the tech journos in their contact list.

The press release promoting the app, which stressed the importance of anonymity is in this day and age, was sent to people using the CC function, and not the private BCC one.

This has got to be either the cleverest PR stunt in a while or an honest mistake. I really hope it’s the former, though given that the PR person then sent the message again using the BCC function as though nothing had happened, it seems unlikely.

The story has come to light on Buzzfeed, uploaded by one of the journalists who received the press release, and once again raises the old question of: is there such thing as bad press?

In this instance, the app has received the kind of attention it probably wouldn’t have achieved with a press release alone, no matter how well it was written. It certainly now stands out to all those journalists who receive hundreds of stories about new products each day.

Verdict, which is described in the press release as ‘hot or not for stuff’, allows users to rate an image uploaded by another user. I’m imagining it to be a sort of Tinder for consumer goods, except that you don’t get to sleep with the product in the end if you like it.

We’re here discussing it, and having learned of its premise, Verdict is actually something that my friends and I would be interested in – so maybe they’re having the last laugh?

The story was only posted on Buzzfeed a few hours ago, so it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

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