Good PR, bad PR

This weekend our product had four national press appearances. One of them was Forbes Turkey, by the technology editor Ersun Erdinc, outlining the idea behind the "Merve'yi tavla" application and how it became popular. It was a follow-up for the detailed article in the September issue and was quite supportive.

The second one is a "men's" magazine named Boxer, which competes with licensed magazines such as the Turkish versions of Esquire, Men's Health and FHM. That one was funny and included actual dialogs with Merve. Boxer claimed that their readers would doubtlessly be capable of talking Merve into going on a date with them and encouraged them to give it a try.

Third one is called Marketing Turkiye. It was a modest article quoted from a press release agency. Still a good channel to promote our brand, though.

The last one was less positive. A marketing agency had created a bot project for Tefal and based it solely on Botego. The idea was to promote Tefal products to women during a conversation. The agency came up with the idea, created the interface, and sold it to Tefal, but Botego was the heart (from an engineering point of view, the "engine") of the project.

To our surprise, the related article published in Fortune Turkey was written as though the marketing agency had manufactured the whole thing and was able to create any kind of bot (which is not correct). The article did not mention Botego at all. When we discussed our concerns with a board member from the agency, we were told they had not intended to present the project as entirely their own creation. We still have not figured out how the miscommunication happened.

Incidents of misinformation cannot always be prevented, so it is important we swiftly address them in order to preserve our brand value.