The Temu People Asked A Sports Reporter To Not Use Its Name As Shorthand For Crap Quality
from the if-the-knock-off-shoe-fits dept
Normally, a post about the signing of an NFL free agent wouldn’t make it anywhere near these here Techdirt pages. Today, that is not the case. The site For The Win posted a mildly interesting report on the Tennessee Titans signing wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson to a 4 year, $78 million contract.
But wait, you’re wondering, where does the Techdirt part of this come in? Well, it starts with this passage from the FTW post:
Fortunately there’s wiggle room should things fail to pan out. With only $38 million guaranteed, the Titans can reasonably walk away from this deal after one or two years and start fresh.
This contract isn’t as big as it seems and could be an asset if Robinson’s 2025 was merely his first giant leap forward in a career marked by growth. As it stands, he seems like the name brand version of the Temu receivers Ward played with as a rookie. That’s a good thing, even if it’s an expensive one.
And then it morphs into this, direct from the FTW author of that post:
Let me stipulate a couple of items. There seems to be nothing in Temu’s reach-out that resembles a threat. They aren’t making any demands. All of the communication seems to be polite enough and I’ve seen companies behave far worse than this when their brands are associated with something negative.
That said, this is still the weakest of sauces. Reaching out to a sports reporter as a large retailer brand just because you don’t like a single throwaway joke-line in a story about a free agent signing is a demonstration of the thinnest of skins under any circumstances. It’s all the more so when the brand in question does have very real reputation problems with large swaths of the public, earned or otherwise.
It doesn’t take much in the way of Google-Fu to uncover precisely why the author of the post chose to associate Temu with knockoff quality products. The company is not BBB accredited. It has a 2 out of 5 star review on Trustpilot. There are a ton of Reddit threads just like this one with people sharing their negative experiences buying off of Temu.
I’ve never bought from Temu. But there is a great deal of smoke out there for there to not be any fire. And if Temu really thinks the best path towards correcting its reputational problems is firing off requests to remove references to those problems from articles about professional athletes, well, then I’m beginning to see the real source of the problem here.
Filed Under: cheap goods, christian d'andrea, journalism, knockoffs
Companies: temu, usa today
Comments on “The Temu People Asked A Sports Reporter To Not Use Its Name As Shorthand For Crap Quality”
Everyone in my sphere from millennials to gen Alpha use Temu like this, it’s just slang at this point. Idk what they think they’re gonna do with this letter since everyone is using it hahahah
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It was “wish” before that.
I was just thinking earlier today: I wonder what the hockey player Selänne thinks about his name meaning “the cheap version” of something. At least there aren’t any other major league hockey players with his last name.
(Yes, I know his name is Teemu and not Temu).
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Then your joke makes no sense.
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I think I’ve figured out what the “T” in “Stephen T. Stone” stands for. 😉
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Because *no one* makes jokes based on similar (in this case, almost identical) pronunciation.
In fact, since it’s such a new idea, I will coin a term for it: a playful uniform nomenclature, or “p.u.n.” for short.
People have been using Temu as a jokey shorthand for crap for years now, to be quite honest the lowered expectation of quality benefits them as people make purchases knowing they’re entering a lottery and don’t complain as much when they lose.
I wonder how they even found that, it’s not like For The Win is a big publication with a big audience. Do they comb through news articles checking for unflattering references to their company or did they stumble across that article by chance? They’ve Streisanded themselves by addressing that article at all so great job there, Temu
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A scam for both of them to generate press for themselves?
Looks like Temu got their lawyers from Temu.
This is what happens when get a PR firm on Temu
There are tools specifically for monitoring a company’s presence on the internet. Media mentions are one of the key things those tools are designed to look for and alert on.
I need to take a Temu.
They asked nicely. Don’t see the reason for scorn.