The social media marketing and advertising world is abuzz today over the release and rapid withdrawal of a 60-second Internet-only spot for Hyundai. The commercial depicts a middle-aged man attempting to kill himself by running a hose from the exhaust pipe of his Hyndai through the window, the gap sealed with tape. In the end, he gives up because the car produces only water vapor and no CO2 emissions.

The video has provoked a firestorm of criticism, including a blog post repeatedly cited in coverage of the kerfuffle. Written by London-based copywriter Holly Brockwell, the post recounts her own father’s suicide in a car. It’s a heart-rending post that concludes with this:

I’d like to ask that next time you want to tell the world about a new innovation in car design, you think about it for a little bit longer. Think about me. Think about my dad. And the thousands of other suicide victims and the families they left behind.

My dad never drove a Hyundai. Thanks to you, neither will I.

The ad, titled “Pipe Job,” was created at the behest of Hyundai’s European division by a European agency, Innocean Europe. According to Matthew Herper, writing for Forbes, a spokesman said “Hyundai Motor North America was not involved in any way in its production or original posting.”

Hyundai Europe issued a statement apologizing for offending anyone and noting that the ad had been taken down and wouldn’t be used for any future advertising or marketing.

Most commentators analyzing the situation have shared the same palm-to-forehead what-were-they-thinking reaction. The problem that most haven’t addressed, however, is that the entire Hyundai brand has been tarnished, not just Hyundai Europe, and that if the company’s marketers had adopted a global, collaborative philosophy, the ad most likely never would have seen the light of day. The fact that Hyundai North America was unaware of the impending online release of the video is at the heart of the problem. The Internet is a boundary-less phenomenon. One geographical group cannot distribute content without customers in other regions seeing it. Further, nobody viewing the ad (which, of course, is still accessible despite the fact that the original was taken down) will wonder about its provenance. “Which region produced that ad?” is the question that will be asked by nobody, ever.

(If you don’t think content produced in one region can’t affect another, just ask Ford Motor Company, which recently had to deal with a print ad that was never meant for public display, produced by an ad agency in India.)

Consider that, despite the fact that the ad was produced in Europe, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention issued a statement. Ultimately, Hyundai North America had to say something, too: “We at Hyundai Motor America are shocked and saddened by the depiction of a suicide attempt in an inappropriate UK video featuring a Hyundai. Suicide merits thoughtful discussion, not this type of treatment.”

It’s not an awful statement, though it does point a finger at a different business unit. But again, people who see the video won’t make the distinction. The days are over when business units can operate in isolation from one another. Thirty years ago, a commercial shown on UK television would never be seen by U.S. audiences no matter how controversial it was. Today, there’s YouTube. Any content depicting the company’s brand or products is global, regardless of the region for which it was originally intended.

With luck, it’s a hard-learned lesson for Hyundai and others observing the crisis, and it’ll be the last time any region releases content that haven’t been seen by marketers in other parts of the world. Silos are not a bad thing: If you tear down silos, all the grain falls out. Silos ensure resources are allocated and skills are available to achieve specific, discrete tasks. But greater collaboration and sharing are required across the entire organization to prevent companies from experiencing more of these self-made crises.

(You have to wonder why suicide keeps finding its way into advertising. It always generates a negative response and the company behind it always ends up apologizing, whether it’s a lonely GM factory robot cashing in its chips or a solitary Pepsi Max calorie finding multiple ways to end it all in a series of German display ads. And Adweek points out that “a disproportionate number of car ads…have focused on suicide.”)