Grey flew a huge spelling error across the Cannes skyline. Someone shared a photo. Everyone pointed at it and laughed. Since then, the image has been viewed over 16,000 times on twitpic and covered by a number of blogs and industry press.
But the question remains - a massively unfortunate screw up in front of your peers, or, an attempt at demonstrating the power of social media?
Whilst the former is the most likely but also boring outcome, what would be more interesting is if this had been an attempt to show that something as menial as towing a banner from a plane could be turned “viral”, through social media. After all, the simple addition of an extra “i” was enough to turn a non-standout event into, arguably, the most shared piece of content from Cannes 2011. Grey simply gave people something to talk about.
However, whether it’s claimed to be a PR stunt or not, Grey could still end up with ”oeuf sur les visage” after what probably won’t be termed “Spellgate”, because Grey now face one of the more untested areas within social media - Crisis management…unless…it’s an experiment in handling that as well?
One thing is for certain. No-one will give a toss in a month.
