I went up to San Francisco this past weekend to support my sister in her event “dine for a change” - A benefit for the San Francisco Women Against Rape which provides free services to victims of rape.  She worked really hard, and from what I was hearing from initial reports around the city, it seemed to be a success.

She was able to bring Yelp on board as a marketing partner.  They donated a newsletter sponsorship that went out to San Francisco yelp members to SFWAR.  This means that Yelp sent out a newsletter which read “sponsored by SFWAR” with a link to the website under the article title and also included a banner ad for the “dine for a change” event at the bottom.  Great exposure; great job Erica.

Well, turns out Yelp made an honest mistake, but one that should have been caught.  The topic of the newsletter that SFWAR was attached to was about bicycles.  A normal topic, nothing crazy about it.  That is until the writer came up with the title “Put the Fun Between Your Legs” - sponsored by San Francisco Women Against Rape!  I’m sure it was just a simple overlook.  Editors may not have realized that SFWAR was an organization treating rape victims.  But you can imagine the displeasure of many supporters of SFWAR and victims of rape that read that newsletter.

To my sister’s horror, she began to receive emails from people about the mistake minutes after the newsletter went out.  Even Yelp itself was getting phone calls from people complaining about the inappropriateness.  Yelp owned up to the mistake and sent a correction with a new, more appropriate title and an official apology for the overlook.

In the end no real harm was done and one could even look back and chuckle at what happened (since it was an innocent overlook).  As for my sis…no press is bad press.  She got two releases and probably more attention to that article, SFWAR, and “dine for a change” because of the incident.

You can actually tell when they release the correction because people comment on that.  The funniest response is the first person to realize the inappropriateness:

Anyone else notice the tasteless combination of an email title of “Put The Fun Between Your Legs” and just below the title, the statement “This Weekly Yelp brought to you by SF Women Against Rape”

Click here to see all the comments: http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-put-the-fun-between-your-legs