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Why waste time with bad pitches?
It amazes me how many people are using the “shoot and pray” method when pitching their products, services or clients. Why not use better and more effective techniques?
But sometimes, just sometimes… I answer to people sending me bad pitches, and today was one of those days.
Dear Website Owner,
65% of people searching the Internet will never find your web site unless you’re ranked on first page of Google, MSN, or Yahoo. If I help you obtain as much as 4 times more WEB traffic to your online business by promoting you to the first page of the search engines would you be interested?
Our company is on the first page when you search on Google for our primary search term “SEO Company.” We would like to do the same for your web site so you can come up for your main keywords as well? All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.
This special SEO program includes:
No upfront fees
A month-to-month program
More traffic guaranteedPlease reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
______________________________________________________________________
Sincerely,
Josh HF
Dear Josh HF,
65% of people hiring anyone via Internet will never hire you unless you state your company name, use a company email-address and use your full name when pitching companies offering your SEO services. I can not verify that your company is on the top 10 Google search results for “SEO Company” because you don’t actually state your company’s name.
If I can help you to obtain as much as 4 times more paying customers by giving you a few tips how to market your company, interact with people and above all create an effective pitch email, would you be interested?
Please reply to my email and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
Sincerely,
Katja Presnal
Great Photos Equal Great PR
Case study:
Amanda is a mompreneur, who couldn’t find a product she was looking for when she had her first baby 8 years ago, so she decided to create it herself. Her unique baby product got her friends asking for one for their babies too and soon she was making the products so often for friends and their friends, that she decided to start her own company and start selling her products for other parents as well. Her revolutionary baby product was hitting the retailers and she also started her own online store in 2004. Her website was getting decent amount of traffic and sales, and all the customers who bought the product absolutely loved it, and Amanda started visioning for more. She wanted to have her baby product featured in magazines, written about in blogs and used by celebrity babies. She pitched her product, and was rejected again and again. All this at the same time while getting a lot of positive feedback on the product itself.
In 2006 another mompreneur Hannah saw Amanda’s product and also loved it, but was hoping for getting it in a different color options that what Amanda was offering. Hannah was trying to find the same product from other companies to get it in a color she liked, but couldn’t find a similar product in the market. Hannah had an idea - she wanted to start a company making the baby product like Amanda’s was, and offer it in new color schemes. In early 2007 Hannah’s website launched with inviting graphics and high quality product photos of the baby product in use. In now time Hannah’s baby product was in the baby magazines, featured on TV shows and blogged in mommy blogs.
Amanda’s original product was actually better made, and their price points were around the same, the products are very much alike, but it was Hannah who was getting all the good PR. There are several reasons of course, but one really big reason is pictures and the visual branding. Better pictures, better PR, and ultimately, more sales.
3 Reasons Why You Need Great Product Photos for Great PR:
1. Everyone wants their website or magazine to look good, if your product makes them look good, they are more likely to feature it.
2. The easier you make it for people, the more willing they are to help you. While most magazines take their own photos, websites and blogs don’t. If you offer them great photos they can use to feature you, they are more likely to feature your product.
3. You want your photos to represent you and your product correctly, and it doesn’t matter how great your product is if your photos say “poor quality” - that will automatically be the first impression of your product as well.
The bottom line is.. Better photos means more PR and ultimately better sales numbers.
Pantene Knows Marketing - Secret Shampoo Revealed
Pantene is the world’s best-selling haircare brand, offering a variety of shampoo, conditioner and styling products, sold in around 100 countries.
But how does a shampoo become the best selling shampoo in the world? Is it the price? Is it the quality? Is it the branding and marketing? It’s the combination of all of them.
Pantene hair care products by Procter & Gamble are the number one selling hair care brand in the world, and after reading numerous (negative) product reviews in the online forums, seems like it still might not be voted as the “best shampoo in the world” *. This is an important note to take for the marketers when doing your marketing research, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed. The same people who vote another (higher priced) brand as “better shampoo”, still go and purchase the lower priced Pantene - the shampoo, which is giving them the overall better value than the “better shampoo”.
Pantene is a low price point shampoo, and the success of Pantene being the most sold shampoo in the world probably has a lot to do it being an inexpensive shampoo beating other cheap shampoos in the quality. What is worth the notice here, is that the Pantene advertising does not focus on their low price point, it focuses on quality of the shampoo, great visuals and to the feedback they hear from the consumers.
QUALITY OF THE SHAMPOO
2007 ad. Strong Hair, Glamorous, Hollywood Worthy
GREAT VISUALS
2008 ad. Strong Hair, No Questions Asked. Very strong visual
GREAT VISUALS INTERACTING WITH ENVIRONMENT
2008 ad. Stop Split Ends. Very strong visual, the message combined with the environment, the double light post.
2008 campaign. Strong hair. Interactive display, free shampoo samples distributed.
CONSUMER BASED & INTERACTIVE
Pantene doesn’t just encourage women to use their hair care products, but also cutting the hair - for charity. Pantene started Beautiful Lenghts last year to collect hair, 8 inches at the time, to be used for wigs for cancer patients. Pantene works together with American Cancer Society, who distributes the wigs made out of donated hair to women who have lost their hair due cancer treatments. Even the writer herself was inspired to cut her hair earlier this year. The Beautiful Lengths campaign is an excellent example of Pantene’s community involvement, philantrophy and interactive marketing. They for example host hair cutting events across the nation.
Another great example of Pantene’s community based marketing is their new song used in their commercials. Pantene held a user generated song writing contest at Midem in Cannes. “We are always looking for new ways to emotionally connect Pantene, the number one haircare brand in the world, with consumers,” said Freddy Bharucha, Marketing Director for Pantene North America about the song writing contest. The winning song was “Shine” by Rosi Golan, which has already aired in TV commercials like in the one below.
This TV commercial with the happy woman & girl also targets one of Pantene’s important target market: moms.
SALON SECRET SHAMPOO CAMPAIGN
As I write this blog post, Pantene’s “Salon Secret Shampoo” campaign is going on, and I am actually spoiling the secret here by telling, yes, the TV commercial with Stacy London telling you about the “secret shampoo” is about Pantene Pro-V.
Pantene teamed up with Walmart to create a Salon Secret Shampoo campaign, and the secret being told at Walmarts on November 24th. Walmart’s Eleven Moms **, real life mothers and also bloggers in Walmart’s social media reach out campaign, got to test the shampoo in a blind test and Pantene interviewed moms about their hair dilemmas. Pantene had done similar type testing in hair salons country wide and their results was that 70% of people liked Pantene shampoo better than the salon brand.
The participating moms of the Walmart’s Eleven Moms campaign are also featured in the Secret to Great Hair website and the videos, like the one above, are also in the campaign’s YouTube channel. The women are offering their honest opinions in the videos. What makes this campaign brilliant, is that the same women also promoted the campaign in their individual blogs.
They were not told what the shampoo was, but all of the Eleven Moms received a mystery box of the secret shampoo in mail and the anticipation was built online by their blog posts and videos. The bloggers also posted the Secret Shampoo badges to their blogs and told their readers they also they could receive free samples of the shampoo to test it at home.
A few weeks later, the blogger moms received another mystery box - revealing the sectet. This time with a lock and a note that the number code for the lock would arrive a few days later. The anticipation grew now even among the testers, and many bloggers (writer included) couldn’t wait the code to arrive and used creative ways to open the box to reveal the shampoo in fact was Pantene Pro-V.
The video star is Alyssa, Kingdom First Mom.
I will be very interested to hear what kind of results Pantene is getting with the Salon Secret campaign. But according the information on hand now, their target market was reached well so far online and off line. They participated in the community of their target market via the Eleven Moms, who made the campaign spread organically online. The beauty of the campaign was also that it was the real life consumers marketing the product by their honest opinions.
Ps. This Blog Post was mentioned at Advertising Age even before I hit the publish button.
* The writer hasn’t been using Pantene before, but received free samples of Pantene’s Pro-V Hair Care line during the Salon Secrets Campaign and was pleasantly surprised, but won’t quit using her salon brand shampoo. The negative comments can be found anywhere where Pantene Shampoo is reviewed, and no, the writer did not do any type of quantitative research whether Pantene got more positive or negative reviews.
** The writer is one of Walmart’s Eleven Moms, but did not participate the salon testing and this is the only blog post she has written about the “Secret Shampoo”.
Babywearing International’s Response to Motrin
The Motrin ad campaign couldn’t have come out at a worse time for
Babywearing International, a non-profit group dedicated to babywearing advocacy and education. It is The International Babywearing Week, and their organization has been focusing on celebrating, promoting and advocating the many benefits of babywearing during this time. Part of this has been a media outreach and educating people about the facts of babywearing.
Babywearing International sent the following response concerning the Motrin mom-alogue campaign to McNeil Consumer Healthcare on November 17, 2008:
Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
Dear Ms. Widmer:I am Susie Spence, president of Babywearing International, Inc., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote babywearing, with benefits for both child and caregiver, through education and support. I write to you on behalf of the Babywearing International Board of Directors concerning the mom-alogue advertising campaign for Motrin, which purports to be from the point of view of a babywearing mother.
We are deeply troubled by this campaign for the following reasons:
- It disparages babywearing mothers by portraying them as victims of a painful fashion trend;
- It falsely states that baby carriers “put a ton of strain” on the wearer’s back, neck, and shoulders;
- It falsely implies that mothers who wear their babies “cry more” than those who don’t;
- It portrays the research-proven benefits of babywearing as rumor or speculation subject to doubt;
- It disparagingly implies that babywearing mothers look “tired and crazy;” and
- It was timed to run during International Babywearing Week, November 12-18, 2008, when nonprofit babywearing groups all over the world are celebrating babywearing, and thousands of volunteers are working to publicize the benefits of babywearing and to encourage the practice of babywearing.
Just as we are working to create community support for this beneficial practice so that no parent will ever again be harassed or ridiculed for babywearing, McNeil is perpetuating an image of babywearing parents as silly people who make irrational choices to be in fashion. Your “mom-alogue” could hardly be more ill-timed, off-base, or damaging to babywearing parents or to parents who have yet to reap the benefits of babywearing.
While we do sincerely appreciate that McNeil Consumer Healthcare is not so crass a corporate citizen as to continue showing the mom-alogue on the Motrin website in the face of the uproar it created on social networking sites and through email, merely discontiuing the campaign is no step toward repairing the damage it has caused and continues to cause.
Babywearing International, Inc., calls upon McNeil Consumer Healthcare to counter the effects of this offensive ad campaign in the following ways:
- Completely discontinue the campaign by not allowing any further publication of it in any media;
- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that portrays babywearing mothers as the savvy parents and consumers they actually are;
- Undertake an equally prominent campaign that explains the proven benefits of babywearing and directly counters the portrayal of babywearing as painful or as a practice that makes babywearing mothers cry;
- Undertake a campaign to educate healthcare providers as well as patients about the research-proven benefits of babywearing. In fact, babywearing makes mothers more confident and results in fewer tears for both mothers and children.
Recognizing that Motrin is a brand that has heretofore been mother-friendly as well as child-friendly, Babywearing International would consider assisting Motrin in partially repairing the recent damage to its image by having Motrin’s collaboration in our Medical Outreach Campaign, through which we provide research-based information to medical doctors, counselors, and parents concerning the health benefits of babywearing.
Most sincerely yours,
Susie Spence
President
Babywearing International, Inc.
www.babywearinginternational.org
Looking forward seeing what happens next.
Links:
More about Babywearing at Adventures in Babywearing
Motrin Heard the News *UPDATED*
It has been interesting to see how this has been unfolding today.
My YouTube video has gotten over 2500 views, my blog posts mentioned at Peter Shankman’s blog, and at Mashable, written by Sarah Evans. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting posted my video, so did 5 Minutes for Mom. And over 60 blogs blogged about it today and linked to Skimbaco Lifestyle.
A lot of upset moms.
Bad PR.
And silence from Motrin - until just an hour ago, when Motrin.com was taken down - for little upkeep called taking the ad down.
I also just received an email from Kathy Widmer, Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare.
Dear Katja -
I am the Vice President of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. I have responsibility for the Motrin Brand, and am responding to concerns about recent advertising on our website. I am, myself, a mom of 3 daughters.
We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies. We believe deeply that moms know best and we sincerely apologize for disappointing you. Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website. It will take longer, unfortunately, for it to be removed from magazine print as it is currently on newstands and in distribution.
-Kathy
Kathy Widmer
VP of Marketing - Pain, Pediatrics, GI, Specialty
McNeil Consumer Healthcare
Great - looks like the clean up of the mess has started, and so far done right. Looking forward seeing what happens next.
Motrin’s website was down for good 15 hours, and now this message has replaced the ad:
This is a great start, and hopefully a wake up call, not just for companies involved but for the rest of corporate America. Companies need to be on social media, and communicate with their target market.
Even if people don’t agree that the ad was/wasn’t offensive (which by the way is a personal opinion, and same way that we can’t say someone is wrong because they don’t like tuna fish, you can’t say that moms who found this ad offensive are wrong), the fact reminds that it took 24 hours from Motrin to response anything to those who were offended. Many in social media think 24 hours is a long time to response, we are used to instant gratification, but for a company who isn’t involved in social media, it was some what impressive to get any type of response within 24 hours and on a Sunday evening.
Motrin Makes Moms Mad
Dear Motrin Marketing Team,
I am hoping you will feel our pain, and you have enough Motrin to survive the Motrin babywearing campaign headache you will be feeling in the next couple of days, maybe even weeks. I am truly sorry if someone looses a job over this, but frankly, this would have been easily avoided - by asking a few babywearing moms, what they thought of your babywearing = pain ad.
Me and several other moms in the online communities were offended by your ad targeting moms, which said:
Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.
I mean in theory it’s a great idea.
…
And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free.
Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience.
They say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others.
But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t?
I sure do!
These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?!
I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid.
Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.
And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.
The advertising video started a discussion on Twitter.com, and in the mommy blogging community. Jessica Gottlieb recommended using a #motrinmoms hashtag for the discussion and “a few hours and two thousand tweets later #MotrinMoms is the #1 search on Twitter, eclipsing SNL for the first time since Obama was elected” .
I asked my followers on Twitter what they thought of the the ad:
And the responses were flooding… I wanted to collect the message for Motrin, but unfortunately YouTube lets you make only a 10 minute video - and I couldn’t fit every comment for the ten minutes!
Here is only a short list of blog posts covering the Motrin ad fiasco:
Motrin’s New Ad Attacking Babywearing
Motrin Ad Bashes Baby Wearing
Motrin the Anti-Mom
Twitter Moms Uproar Over Motrin Video
Twitter Crouwd Isn’t Inviting Motrin Moms to Their Playdate
Motrin Moms React
And since it is 4 o’clock on Sunday morning when I’m writing this (it sucks that bad PR happens when the marketing team has a day off, doesn’t it?) , I’m keeping my marketing advice simple:
1. Always know your target market.
2. If you don’t know your target market - hire someone who does. For example, when marketing to moms - ask moms!
3. Don’t underestimate the power of the synergy of blogging communities like mommy bloggers.
4. You have to be using social media so you can monitor and take control when something like this happens. Monday morning is not fast enough. Everyone will know your story told by someone else but you by noon on Sunday.
The good news is, that any company marketing to moms can achieve amazing results by the help of the moms & the mommy blogging community. The ways companies can do this:
1. Hire a Chief Mom Officer, who knows the target market & marketing. Or hire Mom Experts to answer your questions how you can reach moms. (Motrin: hire a Chief Mom Officer, soon launching MomForce will be a great source)
2. Ask what you can do to moms, not what moms can do for you.
3. Show that you genuinely care, start a conversation and listen the answers your target market is giving you.
Written by Katja Presnal
Mommy Blogger
PR / Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mother of Three
katja dot presnal at skimbaco dot com
Tele Class How to Make Money with Holiday Gift Guides UPDATE
Our live Tele Class How To Make Money With Holiday Gift Guides was a huge success! Thank you so much for everyone who participated.
I was in the telesales conference, thank you so much for doing that. Since I am new to doing reviews, it was very helpful, and not just for setting up my holiday gift guide.
Sheri, Unexpected Bliss
Since the class was so popular we are now offering it as a recorded version you can take any time.
Here is more information about the Tele Class:
Delivered as a downloadable MP3 file and an information full email.
You will learn in this class:
- How to build a Holiday Gift Guide
- How to use Wishpot.com for making it easy to build your guide and promote your guide
- How to use affiliate programs
- Why pictures are important
- What is the difference between a Shopping Guide and a Gift Guide
- How to promote your Holiday Gift Guide
We are hosting a Virtual Holiday Gift Guide Party on Cyber Monday and all class participants will be featured.
Cost: $20
PAY NOW:
You can pay securely through PayPal, make sure we have your correct email address. The recorded class and the information packed email will be sent to you within 12 hours of your payment. To speed up the process - send a direct message to @katjapresnal or comment here.
Tele Class for Bloggers: Make Money with Holiday Gift Guides
Me and Christine Young of the successful blog From the Dates to Diapers and beyond are offering you a fun and useful tele class on how to make Holiday Gifts for your blog and how to make money with them.
Social shopping site Wishpot.com makes making holiday gift lists easy for anyone, but Wishpot wish lists are also a great tool - let us tell you how we use Wishpot in building our Holiday Gift Guides!
We are not just sharing you all our best tricks and tips how we make money with Holiday Guides, but we also will help you to sign up with right affiliate programs, and help you to promote your holiday gift guide. We will be hosting a Virtual Holiday Gift Guide Party on Cyber Monday, when all the participants of the Tele Class will be hosting a giveaway to promote the launch of the Holiday Gift Guide.
Here’s the UPDATED kicker:
we will help you to find a sponsor for your giveaway! We guarantee a giveaway prize for your blog. AND *just in* your Holiday Gift Guide will be featured in Wishpot.com!
Here is more information about the Tele Class:
WHEN: Thursday November 13, at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST
You will learn in this class:
- How to build a Holiday Gift Guide
- How to use Wishpot.com for making it easy to build your guide and promote your guide
- How to get paid for your Holiday Gift Guide
- Why pictures are important
- What is the difference between a Shopping Guide and a Gift Guide
- How to promote your Holiday Gift Guide
Included in fee: promotion for your holiday gift guide, inclusion for Virtual Holiday Gift Guide Party with giveaways and a free giveaway gift to give to your readers!
We are hosting a Virtual Holiday Gift Guide Party on Cyber Monday and help you to find a giveaway gift to give out to your readers on a giveaway starting on that day.
Cost: $20
PAY NOW:
You can pay securely through PayPal, make sure we have your correct email address, the details for the tele class will be emailed an hour prior the event.
The event will be hosted at Conference Call University.
And make sure to tell your blogging friends too - the more bloggers we get to our Virtual Holiday Gift Guide Launch Party, the better visibility we all get! Get the banner code here!
Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.
Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party
One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is
“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”
Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.
TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!
There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.
Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.
While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.
See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.
CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK
I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.Katja Presnal
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE
Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.
The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.
Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.
CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”
Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.
Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.
Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.
When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.
Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.
The World’s Worst Press Release
Tip of today: if you don’t know how to write a great press release, don’t do it at all.
PRESS RELEASE TIPS
1. Many PR people advise companies writing one press release a month, if not for anything else, but to post at free press release distribution service sites to get back linking to the company’s website and using relevant key words to get a good Google spot.
2. They also say “don’t do a press release, if you don’t have anything new to say”. This get tricky, huh? You’re suppose to get “news” out, but if you don’t really have news, you still should “get your name out” anyway.
3. Another great tip is to use statistical numbers by some well known source. Or state a problem and offer a solution.
4. Other tip PR folks like to say “use a current angle” in your press release, something to tie in with current news. For example now would be a great time for companies pitch “frugal Holiday gifts” since the economy has made everyone thinking how we can afford Christmas this year.
THE HOME BACK-UP PROTECTION COMPANY FOLLOWED ALL THESE TIPS BUT WROTE THE WORST PRESS RELEASE OF OUR TIMES
Using a good press release distributing site, stating statistical numbers, and showing a need and a solution, using a current angle - sounds like there is a lot the company did right in the press release.
But it is ALL WRONG and caused the company a tremendous amount of Very Bad PR and I among many other PR people vote this the Worst Press Release of Our Times.
The Back-Up company sells bedside shotgun racks (and I want to make sure you understand I hate the product, but it would be a whole another blog post why I think the whole product is all wrong, let’s now just discuss this one particular press release) and yesterday The Back-Up company released a press release that has been raising eyebrows among the PR people world wide.
The press release was written by using all the tips above, and the “current angle” was exploiting the horrible triple murder than happened for Jennifer Hudson’s family. What a distasteful and despicable thing to do - use someone’s tragedy to sell your products!
The original press release is copied here, because it was starting to stir the Bad PR pot for the company, the original press release was changed while I was still writing this blog post.
Too late for Back-Up company though - Chicago Tribune already published the story - and many bloggers, me included had already copied the original press release:
COULD A BEDSIDE SHOTGUN RACK HAVE SAVED JENNIFER HUDSON’S FAMILY FROM TRAGIC DEATH?
Chicago, IL (MMD Newswire) October 28, 2008 — Tragedy strikes in a Chicago home leaving 3 people dead and an Oscar winner forced to identify the bodies of her family.
Jennifer Hudson’s mother and brother were gunned down in their home Friday. Could an invaluable device have saved their lives?
It’s called The BackUp and it is a bedside shotgun rack. Everyday, there are over 8,000 home invasions in America, many resulting in assault, rape, and murder. That’s according to a report by the US Department of Justice.
Whether it is someone known or a stranger entering the home, too many people in this country are paying with their lives during these home invasions. The Hudson family is just one of far too many Americans gunned down in their own home.
What can be done? Law enforcement and the government aren’t solving the problem. So law-abiding citizens are now forced to take their safety, security, and life into their own hands.
Shotguns are often weapons of choice at home because of their deterrent effect on assailants, their close-range stopping power, their affordability and their reduced risk of injury to innocent others from stray shot. But the problem is storing them in a place where you don’t have to turn your back on your assailant. Propped in the corner or under the bed takes valuable time to get to, and could cost you your life.
But now there is a solution. The BackUp makes them easily accessible during a time of need. Racked between the mattresses, The BackUp offers immediate access to the homeowner’s shotgun: in the hands, cocked and ready to defend in 2 seconds.
Home Security Expert Howard Pitts says, “A shotgun provides the most effective protection against home invasion. And The BackUp is a much safer and secure solution than having a shotgun in the corner or under the bed.” The BackUp is made in America and the adjustable 2-foot by 2-foot rack assembles in minutes.
For more information, visit the website at www.the-backup.com Available for immediate interview, contact company president John Peters at (612) 605-3613 or email at press-info@the-backup.com.
Interestingly Chicago Tribune run a follow up story with an interview of the president of the shotgun rack company Home Back-Up Protection, A. John Peters, who said “that he didn’t issue the news release to capitalize on the Chicago family’s pain” and the interview continues “asked if he thought the ad might offend people, Peters said he expected it might. “Just having a gun rack offends a lot of people.””
But changing the press release and trying to say it wasn’t exploiting, which it clearly was, is all too late. Changing the press release just tells that the company knew it was wrong to do it the first place, and is now trying to cover their bases.
The blogs are running wild with this story. The damage for The Back-Up is already done.
“Good news” is that the Home Back-Up Protection company will get the amount of PR they ever imagined - people even say they deserve all the bad PR they can get, and they sure are getting a full load of it.
