SirPrimalform: As richlind33 says, PR is managing public opinion. If you do something that is predictably going to offend people, then you're doing it wrong.
Except if you represent something that deliberately positions itself as vaguely provocative, anarchic, and marginal. A lot of PR affords, or seeks, an element of surprise, or disturbance, or (more or less juvenile) edginess, or whatever, that takes the risk of being "offensive" without ill intent.
I'm thinking of the Benetton campaigns, for instance, that were succesful in increasing brand visibility through (the conservative's) outrage. Or comedic movies, shows, journals, that don't mind being judged as shocking in their ways of toying with codes and representations.
It's risky, always, it's a fine line between "schoolboyish" (not sure ow to translate "potache") and mean-spirited, and above all, it requires a clear positionning intent. If, for instance, GOG goes "yeah, go crazy, be silly, shake the tree" or even "ok why not, hijack popular trends for silly ads, can be fun", and then goes "oops, shaked the tree too much, byebye", the issue is elsewhere. Partly in a very unhealthy over-polarized cultural context, where any wink at a matter gets loaded and drafted on one side or the other.
Just saying. We don't know anything about the process behind it, but things are not as simple as "offends = bad PR".
But again, we're living in a touchy global (too global) culture, to which we come from different subcultural background. And we see that -for instance- each time a Charlie Hebdo provocative frontpage generates international scandals and random interpretations by people who never opened the journal even once.
For me, it's the same issue.