Ocean Marketing Vs. The World: A Follow-Up

Early yesterday morning Mike Krahulik, better known as Gabe from Penny Arcade released a series of emails that were sent between an N-Control customer, Ocean Marketing, and himself. It started with a guy wanting to know where the Avenger he pre-ordered was, and turned into a PR nightmare. Eventually, Paul Christoforo from Ocean Marketing did send out a half-hearted apology to the customer, which you can see in our coverage here.

I have since spoke to someone at N-Control, who assured me that not only was Paul from Ocean Marketing completely out of line, but he and his firm will not be working with N-Control any longer. While I will say that N-Control should have had a closer eye on how their customers were handled, it’s hard for me to hold them at fault. When you hire a marketing firm, you expect them to treat your customers, and your reputation with the same respect that they treat their own business. Never would you expect the sort of outlandish behavior that was displayed by this marketing firm, and the person who was running it.

This is not my first dealing with N-Control, and in previous encounters, I’ve found them to be good people to work with. Despite a poor decision in marketing firms, I still believe that. However, in the future, I hope that they are able to nail down their release dates, so as not to leave customers waiting, which was the original issue that started this mess. So if you’re thinking of boycotting N-Control for this whole mess, you wouldn’t actually be hurting the guy that caused it all.

If you’re wondering how Paul from Ocean Marketing has fared, you might take a look at this article over at MSNBC. It’s amazing to see that even after everything that’s happened, he still doesn’t appear to be genuinely apologetic for what happened. Rather, he’s just upset that he got caught.:

“I didn’t know who that guy at Penny Arcade was,” he admitted. “If I had known, I would have treated the situation a little better. PAX is a great show. What he does is what I’ve been idolizing since I was a kid. It’s admirable he’s put that together. He has a lot of connections, ones I want too.”

Another fun fact, he apparently doesn’t know the mayor of Boston, after all. He does know the guy that works the door at the convention center though.