Agency, heal thyself.

It's very easy and usually unwise for one agency to have a pop at another.

But as with most rules, there's always room for an exception. And we're more than happy to make one for this turkey, from large multinational conglomerate Sapient Nitro.

Apparently, they are 'Idea Engineers', or something. They're so proud of this fact they decided to write a song about it. And produce a video too.

Now musical taste is a very subjective thing, and there will be some out there who might like this jaunty little number. But most were pretty scathing. Twitter and YouTube gems include:

"My eyes just vomited into my brain."
"OMG my skin just fell off."
"A little part of me just died watching this..."
"Makes me feel embarrassed to be a human."

Ouch.

But that's not the point here. The real problem is that the agency was unprepared for the almost universally adverse reaction it received. Rather than taking it on the chin, they started deleting hostile posts from their Facebook page and eventually pulled the plug on the video altogether. Too late. It had already been copied to YouTube.

So here we have a case study in:

A: How not to do agency self-promotion
B: How not to manage a social media backlash.

It appears the video originated from the agency's Indian offices, and that 'cultural differences' are being blamed. Fair enough, but there's another important lesson for us all: The Internet has no border controls.

But wait a minute. Perhaps the agency is having the last laugh here? If no one was talking about them before, they certainly are now. The video has over 50,000 views and counting and it even trended on Twitter. Hmmmm, pass me that guitar....

PS. The final word goes to Sapient Nitro HQ via Twitter: "We do great social media work for our clients. Today we left our own brand unattended. Sorry."