PR Fails which can teach
By Gaëtan L. Charlebois and Estelle Rosen
It's not the Fringe companies' fault we are coming out with this Friday Five this week (we had been sniffing around for this list for a while)...but it didn't hurt to also have the CD from the Fringe, holding press kits for all the companies in the fest. None of these fails is on the epic scale of the insanity at TNM with a director hiring a convicted killer into his cast. However, there are lessons to be learned even in these tiny cases. Some of these fails have been documented by colleagues, others by us. However, we will not be so mean as to name names. Suffice it to say you all know who you are...or maybe don't.
There is nothing like diving, with anticipation, into a press release and being dismayed by its first sentence: "We are exited to announce..." We are exiting as well.
Yes, all press people have libidos (we are NOT the proverbial eunuchs in the harem) so we will respond to semi- or full-nudity in press photos sent to us. However, one show sent snaps of their very hunky lead actor in the altogether except that the actors in the pic had red-eyes. We felt dirty looking at them. We still looked!...but we felt dirty.
How about e-mail press kits with photos but no info or, the reverse, info but no photos...not even porny ones!
Then there is the press kit with a web link that leads to a site where there is absolutely no information about the show but, instead, the personal musings of the director who still has Mommy issues.
This from our colleague, Liesl Barrell, on Twitter: "First line of an #Amazon (.ca) auto-email: 'Vous trouverez la version franaise de ce courriel au bas de la page.' #fail #franaise"
Indeed, Liesl...indeed.
We felt dirty looking at that press pic too! Kinda felt like DIY porn...
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