When it hits the fan…

I am a baseball fan, so yesterday - when the news that noted slugger Manny Ramirez has been fanned for 50 games for doping - I went over to the Major League Baseball site to see what they had to say. (Actually, it was the second thing I did. While I am a baseball fan, and news like this is not great for baseball, I am also a Red Sox fan. For a number of years, Manny starred with the Red Sox. Then he decided he could make more money elsewhere, so he went on a quasi sit-down strike until Boston traded him. So my first reaction was to be a bit gleeful that “Manny was being Manny” somewhere else. My third reaction (after ‘this is not great for baseball’) was to realize the implication that Manny may well have been “using” when the Red Sox staged their miraculous 2004 ALCS comeback and ended up winning the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Overall, there is little joy in any Mudville over this news.

But I digress.

The marketing point is that, when bad news happens, one of the first things you should do is check out your website to see if there is anything on there that, in light of the bad news, makes your company look idiotic. For example:

• Your CEO gets arrested for fraud, and your bio page highlights his winning the “Ethical CEO of the Year” award.
• Your have a major product recall due to shoddy manufacturing practices, and your home page heralds your Six Sigma commitment.
• Etc.

Well, on the Major League Baseball home page when I looked - right there where you couldn’t miss it - was a big fat ad for Viagra.

Well, this product may not be on the list of baseball’s banned substances, but it sure comes under most people’s heading of “performance enhancement drugs” (or PEDs) which are banned. So, MLB ends up looking a little ridiculous.

I just took a peak at the site, and the ad is no longer there. Maybe they took it down, maybe it’s just temporarily rotated out. I’m hoping that it’s the former and that, until the dust settles on the “Manny thing”, the Viagra ad will remain off-site.

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