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Scoop.it!
Spirit Airlines caused a stir this weekend in refusing to refund a dying Vietnam vet $197 for an airline ticket he cannot use after his doctor would not allow him to fly.
...The airline stood by its return policy and its “one-size-fits” all motto, amid much criticism. But when is it ok to make exceptions to your own business rules?... 
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Scoop.it!
Yesterday I received a strident email from Restoration Hardware's "Senior Public Relations Leader" who had her chonies in a twist about my recent sofa satire post. She demanded to know the source of my information and told me to take down the post immediately. It seems she hadn't read the entire post or she would have noticed the disclaimer at the bottom linking the sofa to its true manufacturer. When I pointed out it was clearly all in jest, her response had me laughing out loud...
[Raina Cox blows the whistle on several pompous PR peeps. Not good blogger relations. - JD]
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From
gawker
The public relations industry is at best comical, at worst evil, and, for the most part, a simpering crab pot of truth-twisting and careerist ego stroking.
Gawker blows the whistle on lame PR pitches. Essential question when pitching: who cares?
[Chin up with these silly PR pitches - JD]
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A graduate trainee at a London PR agency has guaranteed himself some shortlived notoriety and a brief stint in the Twitter hall of shame after he went online to hurl abuse at Guardian journalist Grace Dent...
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Continuing our Friday look at this year's social media crises to date, I couldn't help but be struck by the number of misguided attempts at humour there have been so far. Particularly sexist gibes.
Listen up men (I'm going with my hunch on the authorship here): taking the risk of insulting half your audience - the purchasing half at that - just isn't a clever idea....
[What's up with stupid marketers? - JD]
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In the annals of corporate history, I doubt any company has ever flipped their shit more completely than Lotus just did in this Facebook post.
[Yep this one is a big time PR Fail! -JD]
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Plenty of marketing campaigns are kicked off without the benefit of market research. And often they work out just fine — there are, after all, loads of marketing experts out there developing savvy programs and using creative tactics. Sometimes however, those best laid plans can run horribly amuck. And those of us in the research business (and elsewhere) are left scratching our heads. Really? No one gave this idea a second thought?
Research insights can provide tremendous value — across innovation, product development, customer experience, and brand voice and positioning. Unfortunately for these five brands, the Insights team was clearly left out of the equation as these campaigns were drafted....
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The Most Awkward Interview Ever in 7 Easy Steps: Dwight Howard asked Orlando Magic management that head coach Stan Van Gundy be fired. Van Gundy confirmed that to reporters only to have Howard interrupt the interview and try to pretend that he and the coach were friends. Are you strong enough to watch the whole thing?...
[Oh, the horror! - JD]
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Public relations encompasses a multitude of skills: audience analysis, persuasive communication, business savvy. There are those who do all of these things poorly.
These are the PR Dummies. The dumbest of the dumb, every week.
How do acquisitions for companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars get done? Generally not through unsolicited emails to the "tips" line of one of that company's media properties. Although you never know....
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Wow. I still can't quite get my head around last night. What started as a few angry tweets, mentioning no names at all I may add, certainly escalated very quickly. My intention was just to vent, I was incredibly angry at being insulted in such a manner. I thought I would get a handful of replies and forward the offending email onto a few blogger friends as a warning. I didn't expect to gain 400+ new twitter followers as a result and @mentions I couldn't keep up with.
[A PR agency gets stupid at blogger relations - JD]
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Presumably in a move to inject some cultured class into their latest line, UK clothier Topshop recently unveiled a new line of T-shirts printed with one of the most beloved lines of English literature: “Romeo Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo?” But as Britain's Metro reports, the quote, taken from arguably the most famous play by William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet,” is followed by a serious misspelling.
Topshop UK -- Is this a typo which I see before me? Topshop's errant garment.
[Marketing screws up again - JD]
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The video below shows how NOT to do it. The clip is of Rhode Island U.S. Senate candidate, Barry Hinckley, and his five-year-old son Hudson, being interviewed by Fox News Channel's Neal Cavuto. Hinckley elected to put the kid in a campaign advertisement talking about the burden of the national debt. One can argue the wisdom of putting a young child in scripted ad like that -- but clearly it is high risk to ask him to appear live on TV....
[Stupid media interview strategies usually deliver what you deserve - Bad PR - JD]
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When a San Francisco reporter was investigating allegations of wrongdoing at a California hospital, a spokesperson refused to stop touching him.
Don’t touch reporters. Especially when they ask you not to. Twenty-seven times....
[Brad Phillips hits a home run with this classic PR fail - JD]
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Declaring a matter "closed" doesn't make it so. The University of Pennsylvania may learn that lesson the hard way.
On Thursday the Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Penn resigned. Turns out Doug E. Lynch didn't have the PhD he claimed to have from Columbia University. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a University spokeswoman said on Wednesday that Lynch was "unaware he didn't have the degree." Yeah, it is SO hard to keep track of those things....
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How much more do you want to hear about the U.S. Secret Service sex scandal in Cartagena, Colombia? While American media continues to obsess over the gory details behind a night of too much ‘fun,’ a parallel story of outrage and marketing non-sense has emerged causing Spirit Airlines to shut down its campaign ‘Get More Bang for your Buck.’
Leveraging the hype and attention over the news in Cartagena, the ‘cheap’ airline -figuratively and literally speaking- took opportunistic advantage of the news to create a banner ad and promotion implying sex tourism to Cartagena, Colombia. While this is not the first time Spirit Airlines uses racy advertising to lure its customers, this time around the collateral damage of poor insights, targeting and messaging may result in a big hit to the bottom line by upsetting Latinos at large....
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A phony Bank of America press release was carried by Dow Jones Newswires for more than an hour on Aug. 18 before the wire realized the error and removed it.
The release purported to be a call for help from the high-profile bank acknowledging financial pitfalls and referring to a website, yourbofa.com, which carries a letter from CO Brian Moynihan expressing the inevitability that taxpayers will eventually own the company....
[Sloppy editorial oversight & no fact-checking by Dow Jones & a brilliant spoof website]
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From
gawker
The public relations industry is the birthplace of nutrition-free filler that grows up to become pseudonews. Sometimes, it can be a terrifying thing to behold in its rawest form. This is PR Dummies. The dumbth of PR, every week. This week: surveys are a classic way to drum up fake news coverage. Surveys can be dumb. But they can't be super, super, super dumb. This one is.... [Classic PR Fail and stupid PR trick - JD]
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Blogger outreach is an important part of marketing and PR strategies. But there's a right way (and many wrong ways) to conduct effective outreach.
...But this post isn’t about influence measurement, really — it’s about blogger outreach. And how to do it in the most respectful, most effective and most fruitful manner possible. My longtime friend Fernando Fonseca had an experience that might broadly be called “influencer outreach” or “blogger outreach” recently that inspired him to blog about it. He was nice enough not to call the brand in question out on their tactics publicly, but we’ll use Fernando’s experience as a case study in what not to do when you’re engaging in blogger outreach. And please, for all that’s holy, heed this advice....
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You can't insist that the media cover your event. Well, you can --but you are destined for disappointment.
Univ. of Louisville Coach Charlie Strong
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From
gawker
The public relations industry is often called upon to smooth over the errors of others. This makes their own mistakes all the more delicious. This is PR Dummies.
This week: a public relations drama in two parts. We encourage you to stay tuned for the dramatic ending. First, this press release, billed as a story about some sort of sci-fi-ish self-published book, hits the inboxes of reporters...
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From
prdaily
A quote in this story from the councilman’s PR guy is priceless—a must read.
Did you hear about the Philadelphia councilman, the politically connected PR guy, and the social media firm?
It’s no joke—although the story is hilarious.
Jim Kenney, a councilman in Philadelphia, is reportedly paying $28,000 in taxpayer money to a firm called ChatterBlast to handle his social media strategy....
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Prominent brand makes a joke out of sexual assault in its advertising...
The dateline on this story is not a mistake. The year is 2012, and a prominent brand has made a joke out of sexual assault in its advertising.
Belvedere vodka drew an outpouring of derision on social-media websites after it posted an ad on Facebook and Twitter on Friday. The ad showed a young man smiling as he grabs a woman from behind. The woman has a frightened look on her face and appears to be trying to get away. The text of the ad read: “Unlike some people[,] Belvedere always goes down smoothly.”...
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From
gawker
The public relations industry is a festival of shamelessness in which the most shameless are never shamed. We are here to change that. This is PR Dummies.
Celebrity endorsements are costly. Getting Jennifer Hudson to endorse a product would cost, at minimum, tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, why not just shamelessly drop Jennifer Hudson's name all over your press release, despite the fact that you actually have nothing whatsoever to do with Jennifer Hudson? That'll work. This is one of execrable PR agency 5WPR's favorite tactics....
[Speaking of bad PR...]
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In less than a week, political radio host Rush Limbaugh has seen upwards of 30 sponsors flee his radio program. Their migration began in response to an public boycott campaign which has relied heavily on social media.
The actions and inactions of Limbaugh and the companies involved provide lessons for marketers in how to respond to crises, buy media and even outflank competitors....
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From
gawker
The public relations industry is full of whores. Sometimes, they get themselves confused with the rest of the world. We present one of those instances, below.
What is the best way to celebrate "Women's Month" and "empower women?" Is it...by offering women a 2-for-1 deal on becoming prostitutes? Maybe....
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