idiots.

Now every indigenous Australian who checks their email or picks up a newspaper today will have to think about racism again. What a waste of a good day.

Tim – if you are justifying your publishing of the story on the grounds of imcompetence rather than racism, why didn’t your story mention the media company who placed them on behalf of Tourism NT, or how automated adword campaigns are generated. Admit it, you jumped on the headline like everyone else.

Perhaps such agencies will now need to maintain a blacklist of words they don’t want a brand associated, as well as a whitelist of words they do, and ensure that the brand is not associated with those keywords – something that it certainly seems (given ‘abo’ no longer references Tourism NT) that Google is capable of doing.

A lesson for all agencies, and perhaps another entry for Brett’s blog?

Is this really any more racist than calling all British people Poms or Kiwi’s sheep shaggers? Telling Irish Jokes or saying that all Tasmanians are inbred?? Where do we stop with generically labelling races???

Do you get offended when you are overseas and someone calls you skippy, tells you to bowl them a tinny under arm or to show them your manacle marks?

Surely it isn’t about whether Google automatically gives you this option – it’s about appearances to the public. And part of an agency’s job is helping their client manage risks. Type the word “Abo” into Google News this morning (or pick up the papers) and you’ll see they’ve failed in that.

Understanding the technical reason why it happened doesn’t make the problem go away. Attacking Brett Nicholson for raising it (in entirely sensible terms, by the way), is arguably pretty idiotic in itself, G.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella