It seems large French advertising holding company Publicis Groupe discovered the dangers of posting videos on YouTube ripe for satire yesterday.  A well meaning cool company video is now an improbably hilarious and moderately profane piece instead.

Jim Edwards of BNET has a story up on it here: http://bit.ly/9lCdl9 that shows how in an effort to highlight their use of Twitter, Publicis created a video that shows the companies offices, staff and executives all communicating in bird chips and squeaks.  Its actually a clever little piece but it was ripe for the picking for an anonymous creative genius to quickly go through and add a helpful bird translation in the form of subtitles.  In the end they seem to have issues with sharing of inappropriate pictures in the company instead of a social media savvy staff.

I think Edwards covers it nicely but it is an abject lesson in thinking about how your products can be manipulated for satire, or worse, for malicious purposes.  I honestly believe its almost impossible to anticipate all of the many possibilities that could occur but you also have to understand the YouTube environment today.  This is a place where one of the biggest videos lately is the repurposing of a news video of an angry crime victim using Autotune to create a hit song.  Antoine Dodson is moving out of the projects thanks to the Gregory Brothers and the 'Bed Intruder' song.  With 41 million views and a contract for a TV show they prove there is money and fame to be gained with some clever editing on YouTube.

Don't forget to do what the military calls "Red Teaming" of your products before they hit the net.  In other words, take someone outside the project who is a little bit rebellious to look at things and identify how your idea could make someone else famous or rich instead of you.  Its common in agencies to do this for traditional products but in the age of YouTube instant fame its all the more important even for your own companies pieces.  Its a strategic approach that pays huge dividends when creating operational plans and will do the same for your creative products.

Here is the original video from Publicis Groupe:

And the new one posted just 24 hours later by "CampaignMag" with helpful subtitles:

You can't guarantee you won't be a victim of satire but executing some due diligence can at least minimize your chances.