- guardian.co.uk, Saturday August 30 2008 00.01 BST
- The Guardian, Saturday August 30 2008
Slandering brands on YouTube is something of a global sport, but big corporate responses are as varied as they are telling. Nike's reaction to an anonymous internet poster's assertion that Liu Xiang, the hurdler they sponsor, may have pulled out under pressure from Nike rather than because of an injury was met with the slightly terrifying statement that they had asked "relevant government departments to investigate". Contrast this with Electronic Arts' riposte to Levinator25, whose YouTube video of a glitch in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 shows the player taking a shot, "Jesus-style", from the surface of a water hazard. Rather than respond in an intimidating manner, they made their own video of the real Tiger doing exactly that, claiming that it wasn't a glitch, merely that Woods does walk on water. Simple, elegant and EA didn't need to invoke a repressive communist dictatorship to get its point across. Magic.
