A brief word on this PR stunt from a couple weeks ago. It looks like this stunt was orchestrated by Mattel:The rules of word game Scrabble are being changed for the first time in its history to allow the use of proper nouns, games company Mattel has said.
-BBC
Although it has been widely reported that Scrabble will soon allow the use of proper nouns, it turns out that that is not true. In England, an entirely new version of the game will allow that plus other unusual play, but the original game will stay the same.
-cnet
Needless to say, people freaked out over this story. It got a lot of press and successfully got the word out about a new version of the game called Trickster. I guess the stunt was in keeping with the spirit of the new variation, in which anything goes, including stealing tiles and spelling words backwards.
Still, I thought it was bad form when the company turned around, after clearly implying that the rules would be changed to allow proper nouns, and accused the press of sloppy reporting. To me that goes beyond clever Trickstering in service of promoting your product, and starts to get into burned-bridges territory.
