Very insensitive – and potentially bad marketing. Such things can backfire if the customers decide they like mountaineering legends more than pizza. It would put me off buying their products, but maybe I’m not their target group.

Poor taste, yes…..and bad publicity…..but as there is no such thing as bad publicity,

I was running publicity for tourism in the Lake District when the Foot and Mouth crisis hit so I’ll take issue with you about this – another day though 🙂

There seems to be a lot of this around at the moment.

Yes, and in the past too. Shock marketing to raise awareness is not new. It is aimed at creating viral campaigns, in the old days it was called “word of mouth”. Shock tactics involve dark campaigns such as this, those touching on sexual issues – can you think of a company caled Naked? There’s several.
Even Virgin – although their branding has now transcended the shock and now the word sucessfully refers to both sexual innocence and a youthful, fun and diverse global business.
I still think e-mail addresses such as Joe.bloggs@virgin.net are a bit odd, when Joe is a grandfather.