Parklife Text Campaign Offends Those with Deceased Mothers, Earns £70,000 Fine from Information Commissioners' Office

There are good ideas and bad ideas. Publicists are the professionals you hire to point out when your great ideas might have holes in them that could quickly become horrible ideas. The publicists for the Parklife music festival in Manchester probably should have found some issues with the event's 2014 plot to lure fans to the official after-parties by sending them a text from "Mum." It seems like a cute idea at first...until you consider the inevitable fact that at least a few of the attendees probably have deceased mothers. Anyway, that's one of several reasons why Parklife was fined £70,000 by the British Information Commisioners' Office (from NME).

"Some of the Parklife after parties have already sold," read a text coming from a number labelled "Mum." "If you're going, make sure you're home for breakfast!"

The stunt resulted in 76 complaints lodged via the ICO office, most of which were probably just from cell phone users without a good sense of humor. The several complaints filed by upset attendees whose mothers had passed are more than enough to justify the fine however, and make us feel horribly guilty in the process.

"I really hope that you at least have the decency to issue a public apology for this massive mistake that has been made, for upsetting me and the hundreds of other mum-less, and most of all for making me believe, if only for a split second, that my mum was still here," wrote Ros Prior, a fan who was justifiably affronted by the text.

Parklife retroactively acknowledged that the text "was not an appropriate theme for everyone."