
Sadly the fails seem to sneak there way into briefs with far more frequency than the wins. Cest la vie. Here they are:
Launching a new ad campaign
A classic, and yet clients are still surprised that journalists don’t really want to talk about ad campaigns (unless that happens to be their beat). If you want an ad in the media talk to the sales team that’s what they’re there for.
Overt marketing activity
A slightly more tricky one but also this little PR troll turns up pretty regularly too. “we’re running a competition to win R10000 / a trip to new york / some shampoo can yo write a press release”. The answer is a big fat no day 1 of journalism school is devoted to shooting down this type of guff.
Me too! product launch
Another one of my favorites: “we’ve come up with a great new mp3 player, with a little scroll wheel and we’re calling it the iBod can you write a press release?” The answer is yes and you will get coverage saying how lame you are and how poorly it compares to the product/service you’re ripping off that launched a decade ago. Particularly prevelant amongst local web companies sadly. A bit of innovation never hurt anyone…
Not news
A great example was Intel who I used to work for in the UK. There chips speed up by a bunch of gigahertz every few weeks. You’d think anyone would realise this isn’t news and didn’t require a six page press release… I reckon about 80% of the things we’re asked to PR contains no news whatsoever.
Too late
This is a sad one. A client has a great product but they went to market with it six months/years ago and now want to launch it. Or more common they’re launching in two months and want to get into the consumer glossies (which have a lead time of three months). Doh.
Crap product
See Me Too! product. You can’t polish a turd.
Bullshit
There are about a billion people on the internet armed with burning pitchforks waiting for companies to lie to them.
I’m sure there are some more out there but hate to start off an othewise sunny looking Friday negatively…





