Surprise! Racial stereotype gets German company in trouble

wongMashable reports that Mister Wong — a German-based social bookmarking site — is kicking off a contest to find a new logo. The company had run into a fecal typhoon because of its logo, “which was perceived as racist to a very large crowd when the service launched in the U.S.” RACIST? This logo? C’mon. It’s not like it has buckteeth and glasses. Well, it doesn’t have glasses. And there is no truth to the rumor that the company is going to rebrand the character as a Rabbi. No truth to it what so ever. None. Nope. Hmmm, maybe they could use the name of that football team in Washington DC? Native Americans are supposed to very wise aren’t they?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Bad ideas, Mashable, Mister Wong, PR Disasters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Surprise! Racial stereotype gets German company in trouble”

  1. Wadard Says:
    August 8, 2007 at 4:28 pm

    Looks like they are making amends by holding a public logo design competition.

  2. Least surprising development of the day: German marketers prove their racially tone deaf AGAIN « Collateral Damage Says:
    August 17, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    [...] 17th, 2007 · No Comments Last time we had Mr. Wong doing wrong with its logo, now some genius in the Fatherland has actually screwed up a UNICEF ad (try it sometime) by putting [...]

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