Symantec wants you to look silly

(Credit: Symantec)

Editors' note: This blog initially misstated the last day for submitting photos. It is October 15.

Ever thought (or were ever told) that you resembled one of those emoticons you see in e-mail or IM? Me neither. But for those who have had that experience, Symantec has launched a worldwide emoticon look-alike contest.

Now through October 15, contestants can upload their best resemblances to an emoticon for a chance to win a grand prize of $10,000 cash, or one of five first place prizes of $1,000 each. Anyone who enters will receive a 15 percent discount on the purchase of Norton 360 or Norton Save and Restore.

This is not the first time Symantec has gone off the marketing deep end to promote one of its products. Last summer, the big-yellow security vendor created a rock band in support of its Norton Confidential. What rock music has to do with computer security, let alone identity theft, remains unexplained.

[alflanagan]

Symantec Already Made Me Look Silly

They convinced me to buy Norton SystemWorks. A once-great piece of software that's now in the toilet. Maybe they should take some of those ad dollars and hire some good programmers?

[dunnsanfrancisco]

Silly Symantec

Everyone using Symantec looks silly. It was silly of Symantec to start this silly contest. It draws a connection between people looking silly and using Symantec. That's probably not the image Symantec really wants to create, but it sure is an honest image.

Symantec has gone a long way (all down hill) since Peter Norton created the company back in the early 80's. I was one of his earliest customers and I grew quite fond of the "Dr. Norton" software, as it was known back then.

Since those days back in the prior century, Symantec merged with VERITAS and the conglomeration then began gobbling up other companies, some good and some pretty bad. All that activity has dulled Symantec and come pretty close to ruining their original product.

The last thing in the world they should want people to think about is just how silly people look using today's assortment of Symantec products. Most Symantec software are just pigs with lots of glossy lipstick.

I guess those Symantec folks really are silly. They're actually proud of being silly and they want to spread the silliness everywhere through their silly silly-people contest. Silly.

I've got to stop. I'm getting silly.

[Hardrada]

JPEG of death

Where's the emoticon for "My Norton-protected system just got
destroyed by some combination of zero-day malware and Symantec
software"?

I'm just waiting for some hacker with a new zero-day exploit in
Windows' JPEG handling to submit their favorite picture. Too bad it
couldn't make Symantec look any more foolish than they already
look.

[Hardrada]

Hate to be that guy

Some poor slob responsible for sorting through entries is going to
be seeing a lot of high-res pictures of posteriors...

[miller5369]

I didn't mind looking silly for $10,000

The contest looked kind of fun, so I uploaded a picture of my son
(no, not his posterior). When was the last time you heard about a
security software company doing something fun? I assume you all
won't be entering so I can win the $10,000!!!

[jjhiggi]

I agree

Well, not quite sure they were going for "silly", but from the looks of the pictures entered so far, I think you might be right about the "fun". I'm pretty sure they were aiming to get more family types interested versus angry computer geeks. Either way, I'll take 10K from a software company.

[jjhiggi]

Jeeeeeeez

Maybe they should have run a contest for jaded tech historians. Take it easy man. You're talking about a technology company here, not Phillip Morris. They're soliciting mom's to post stupid pictures of their kids and win 10 grand--they didn't give you cancer (did they?).