Hear No Evil; Publish No Evil

On the heels of Edelman's marketing goof-up, Adena Schutzberg tells me about a similar crisis in the GIS world.

(Some may argue that any news is good news, but when Edelman 24 hours later retracts their "no strings attached, you no longer get to keep the Ferrari notebook computer" offer, then it's a goofup.)

You can read about the Leica scandal in this order:

1. Leica lets TITAN out of the bag by Stefan Geens.
2. Leica Goes Dark as TITAN Spins by Adena.

Leica gave out the news before getting an agreement from bloggers to keep it quiet. There was no contract, because both sides did not agree. It was presumptuous for Lieca to assume the 24 chosen bloggers would agree to silence.

There was, of course, a course of action that Leica failed to follow. They should have sent two emails:

a. We have a new product announcement. If you agree to keep quiet about it, we will tell you what it is.
b. Now that you've agreed to our informal NDA, we'd like to tell you about TITAN...

Now there is a contract.