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Starbucks Korea to temporarily shut all stores for history lesson after bungled coffee promotion
(www.theguardian.com)
Starbucks said it was “deeply sorry for an unacceptable marketing incident”
An unacceptable marketing incident? Like it was thrust upon them. Incidentally, by themselves. The language is baffling although I'm willing to accept it might have sounded less incidental in the original Korean.
Obvs this is very dumb, a bunch of executives are asleep at the wheel, and they probably deserve the 26% drop in revenue for it. The apology needs to be performative and this company-wide, revenue sacrificing history lesson is coincidentally good marketing, I imagine.
That being said, this isn't really a FuckAI story. Sure, the model suggested a couple of things that only sound great if you're ignorant of Korean history. But this isn't a model breaking the sandbox and releasing all company secrets by accident. Or suggesting to help teenagers with ending their lives. This is first and foremost careless managerial conduct. They should have stopped the campaign and even might have if they had bothered to read the email attachments. This could've come from a historically ignorant ad agency as well. This is human error, not model madness.
Looking forward to the US Starbucks smashing caffeine explosion campaign that will surely bring the house down in September.