There is an old saying: all publicity is good publicity is good publicity. Yes, even negative publicity!

Actually, sometimes negative publicity is much better than positive publicity. Whenever you do something negative it stirs up more emotions in people. They sit up and take notice and, more importantly, they express their opinions about it. In Seth Godin’s words — they spread a idea virus.

Anyone in marketing knows that people have a tendency to talk more about negative things than about positive things happening with them. And, no one knows it better than UK’s Channel 4.

No matter which news channel I switching to today, there is just one news which is in the headline (right after some funny things that protestors did at G8 Meeting in Germany). Guess what the news is? It’s about a documentary that Channel 4 is about to show in UK tonight on Princess Diana’s Death.

Ever since the late Princess left for heavenly abode, media has had a lot of fascination with her death and has come up with uncountable number of documentaries, special features and books about it.

What’s special about this documentary? The frenzy has been caused by the reports that the documentary will have pictures of Diana lying dead in her car with her boyfriend and both her sons have shown grief that it will be shown.

Guess what � British Tabloid, The Sun, had already had published the very same photos which will be shown tonight. Why didn’t cause such a furor then as it is now? The answer to that is that now Channel 4 is behind all this media frenzy and manipulation.

Channel 4 has perfected the art of playing on public emotions and then commercializing on it.

It had gotten itself hundreds of hours of media coverage when during one of its popular shows, Big Brother, one of contestants made a racial slur towards an Indian Actress.

Is such sort of media manipulation ethical? Hell no! But it sure works and UK’s Channel 4 has proven it not once but twice.