Aceasta reclama a aparut pe la inceputul anului 2003. Oficialii PUMA au negat vehement implicarea lor in designul acestei machete si au amenintat ca vor da in judecata pe oricine o va publica. In ianuarie 2006, Peter Kim, fostul Director de Marketing International, a deslusit misterul ce inconjura aceasta reclama:
What really happened – a small Eastern European agency affiliated with Saatchi & Saatchi created the ads on spec, trying to win business with a PUMA subsidiary. They got nothing and emailed the ads to friends; from that point it snowballed. As you can guess, when the PUMA powers-that-be decided to get all corporate on the blogosphere, the whole thing exploded. Poor Pete M.’s (PUMA GC in the US) email inbox exploded with junk after that, with his name being on the cease and desist. No “Brazilian Maxim”, no evil master plan (they’re real but we’ll say they’re fake), but online store sales were up like CRAZY for a couple of weeks. Too bad we didn’t even have the shoes in the ads in stock!
Oricum am lua’o, aceste machete raman VIRALE.
