When Gerald Ratner announced that his company sold 'tat' at a closed conference back in the 90s, he didn't expect to have his business completely destroyed by a comment which, he thought, was merely an innocent and humorous comment on some particularly cheap items they stocked.
Yet, only a few days later, this comment had been leaked to the press and the ensuing rage it caused amongst customers and the newspaper inches it created have gone down in history as one of the biggest failures (or '#fail') in business history.
Everyone loves a story and a story where a perceived pompous millionaire calls his customers 'stupid' (as was implied by his speech) was enough to ruin business in the hundreds of stores countrywide.
But can you imagine what would have happened if Twitter or Facebook was around then? Twitter especially makes it easy to get news (whether true or not) out to the general populous in super-quick time.
If Twitter was around then it would have been sent out at such speed to have been around the globe before the amassed dignitaries had finished their after-dinner mints.
A movie of the whole horrible episode would probably have been posted to YouTube the following day and then repeated constantly on news channels and the radio.
There's an interesting point right there - have you noticed how the news is playing catch-up to the Internet these days? Every week and often every day you'll see an article discussing some aspect of the Internet and usually how it's been the cause of the downfall of some hapless fool tweeting what he shouldn't have ought to! But again, this isn't the fault of social media.
The Internet doesn't automatically make you look like a complete idiot without you knowing.
At best it amplifies your stupidity and gets it out to a whole new audience.
Remember ten years ago when you messed about at a friend's party, got totally drunk and ended up swimming in the pond with the Koi carp? Remember the wedding where you danced like a man on drugs (maybe you were!) and tried to chat up the bride's mother? Well with the advent of the mini-camera and the availability to upload recordings almost instantly to your website or social network of choice, those events no longer remain in memory only.
It's almost sad, but anonymity has all but gone and in the blink of an eye the stupid things you thought 'stayed in Vegas' are suddenly everywhere for public consumption.
But it's still you doing them.
And this is not a bad thing.
Some of the most shameless promotion in recent years has been through the bosses of huge corporations acting about and making themselves look a fool.
I need only one example - Richard Branson.
His ability to garner publicity through doing the craziest of things is legendary and rather than shy away from the limelight, he actually revels in it.
So if you really want to promote your business in brave new ways, boost your sales online and get noticed for what you do, good or bad then you can do something very simple - act the fool but make sure someone's filming it.
However, there's the rub.
It's you who must act the fool and if you think you can get away with making your customers out to be fools then you will be punished by them.
Gerald Ratner got it all wrong - he made his customers look foolish for buying his products and he was punished dearly.
Today he would have been punished the same way, just much quicker.