German ad boss apologises to bloggers

Such is the power of blogs today.

The leader of a campaign to cheer up German citizens has been forced to apologise after dismissing weblogs as "the toilet walls of the internet".

Jean-Remy von Matt, the head of the leading German advertising agency Jung von Matt, fired off a furious internal email to colleagues after his "Du bist Deutschland" campaign was criticised by the media and in cyberspace by bloggers.

"What on earth gives every computer owner the right to exude his opinion, unasked for? ... and most bloggers really just exude," he wrote.

It's called freedom of speech.

You can see what he still thinks of bloggers from this:

But Mr von Matt was not entirely contrite. "Even if most of the criticism of my email was serious and constructive, I still see it as a breach of respect that an internal memo of mine could be sent scampering like a sow through Little Bloggerville," he complained.

For the head of a leading German ad agency, Mr. von Matt seems pretty clueless about the blogsphere and found out the hard way.
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