When Good PR Stunts Go Bad

Poor THQ. 

THQ is a gaming company which was pushing its new video game, Homefront. Homefront is a first-person shooter that is based around a fictitious war against America. As an off-the-wall PR stunt, THQ released thousands of red balloons into the air. 

The plot to the game is that North Korea invades the United States, and as a symbol of unity, South Korea launched the red balloons to signal to North Korea that it has hope. 

But the stunt went wrong, as the balloons lost steam and started dropping like flies in the San Francisco Bay. Local environmentalists were outraged.

The kicker? The flyer says “Gamestop exclusive!” at the top, so angry environmentalists immediately blamed Gamestop for the incident. It turns out, THQ hadn’t been working with Gamestop on this PR stunt at all, so they knew nothing of it and denied all the responsibility.

While I find it fairly humorous, it proves that companies need a good PR department. Like Bufkins always says, “If the public thinks you have a problem; you have a problem.” In this situation, even though there was no wrong-doing by Gamestop, the public thought it responsible, so the company needed to act. They did, THQ stepped up and now there is less of a problem.

THQ did a good job in this as well. Like I’ve been told countless times, if you’re having an event, have a contingency plan. In this case, THQ thought ahead. The balloons released by THQ were biodegradable as well as the flyers which incriminated Gamestop in the first place.

Twitter and Facebook updates were quick to jump on the hatred bandwagon, which makes me wonder the true effectiveness of the social media giants. Sure, it gets information out with the quickness. But in this case, it got incorrect information out quickly, which is bad for business. It’s borderline libelous. 

But hey, PR stunts don’t always go according to plan, and when they don’t, we PR people get our chance to shine. So I guess it’s a win/win for me!

Forgiveness is overrated

I was reading an article over at The Huffington Post and came across this quote that made me stop and think a second.

“BP’s U.S. operations will need to be sold, spun off or the name will need to be changed because the brand doesn't look salvageable in this country,” Marshall Goldsmith said.

I mean, he’s a CEO consultant and he writes about leadership, so maybe the guy knows what he’s talking about, but really?

What happened to forgive and forget? Forgiveness is a pretty big deal.

People mess up, it happens. It will always happen. We’re not perfect. So why will the U.S. never forgive BP? Since when are we a nation of environmentally friendly people? Most everyone in this country does their part to destroy the Earth, so why are we acting so high and mighty about this situation?

Yes, the company caused the biggest oil spill in American history, but they didn’t set out to do so. It wasn’t a terrorist attack on our nation. If they had set out to sabotage our gulf coast, okay yeah, screw them. But they didn’t.

They should pay damages, and they are. They should help people out whose lives it affected, and they will. Hell, they should probably be fined out the ass, it’s not like they won’t make the money back in a year anyways.

We forgave Exxon after the Prince William Sound fiasco, so why not BP?

Sure, BP didn’t handle it well, but I’m fairly certain they know that now. They should have said to hell with the cap they were trying to install and just shut it down, but they didn’t, which might be why we won’t forgive them – but if they try to make it right, shouldn’t we at least give them a chance?

The only option they have is to sell off, change names or discontinue the American branch? Surely those aren’t BP’s only options.

Then again maybe they are the only options. The Union Carbide catastrophe from the 80’s proved that sometimes it’s all you can do to get out of the situation alive. Sell off your assets and start again, with a fresh image and a clean slate.

The NFL Doesn't Care About You

To me, the collective bargaining agreement debacle is a public relations nightmare. The owners look selfish, the players look whiny and all around the media the league is getting negative press coverage and losing the respect of its fan base, which ultimately pays for its existence.

This longstanding feud between the owners in the NFL and the NFL Player’s Association has been irritating me since day one. The owners, who make the most money by far, have proposed that they should get $2 billion (they currently take $1 billion) off the top of the $9 billion in revenue the league currently enjoys. The rest is split 60/40 among the players and the owners.

So, the way it is currently the players essentially get around $4.8 billion to split and the owners get $1 billion off the top, plus another $4.2 billion to share. Why are they so upset? They’re getting more than the owners!

Well, there are 32 teams. That’s 32 owners splitting $5.2 billion. Rosters are made up of 53 players. I’m not sure if practice squad players get a split of the money, so I’ll leave them out for the sake of this math problem for now. 

The (Sad) Math

32 teams with 53 players each equals 1696 players (1952 with practice squad). That’s a little under $2.8 million per player, while the owners are receiving about $162.5 million a piece. If you throw in the practice squad players (eight per team), the players receive around $2.45 million a piece.

That means the owners, who request the $1 billion off the top to combat their operating expenses (which the owners haven’t shown numbers to account for), get a majority of the money (per person), while the players take all the physical risks and do all the work. And they’re still asking for more.

Why Should I Care?

Okay, so why should we care? It’s billionaires against millionaires. They both make more money than we do, and we make ends meet, right? Well, yeah I guess so. But I for one love the NFL and I’m not sure what I’d do without it. I’d be a sad panda, that’s for sure.

Hey, you – look over here. Yeah, you NFL. It’s me, a fan. You know, the reason you make any money at all. Get something done for us. Not once have I heard anything about the fans in the entire collective bargaining agreement discussions.  Do us a favor and put your egos and wallets aside and get this thing done.

Plan Ahead

No, really. Plan ahead.

Who else has made this mistake before? I’m betting everyone. Even Superman forgot to have a plan B sometimes, and he’s Superman for crying out loud.

And no, I’m not talking about the aptly (and terribly) named pill. Besides, Superman is an alien and wouldn’t need that anyways.

Plans don’t always go according to, well – plans. So when they don’t, that extra alternative could be the difference between success and failure. Ever taken your laptop to class or a meeting and as soon as you arrive, BAM! Dead laptop. Yeah, me too. Luckily though, you’ve brought that archaic set of tools known as pen and paper.

A terrifying alternative, but it gets the job done. If you understand, just skip to the end. If not, keep reading.

Plan B and you

Did my first few paragraphs scare you into always having a fallback option? What do you mean no?

Fine, an old article from Entrepreneur.com showcases why you should always have another option to fall back on.

Because your first idea might suck (and your second, for that matter. Keep reading for plan C). 

No, really. I’m not being a smartass here. Maybe your company basis is fine, but your marketing strategy is a wash. Proceed to plan B. Try something else. Maybe your business model doesn’t make sense to anyone besides you – start over. If it’s not working, what’s the worst that could happen?

Plan C

The most prepared people have a plan C. Now, in some situations having two backup plans might be overkill, sure. But, in crunch time when your laptop dies and your pen runs out of ink, what do you do? Okay, I’m not sure either, but come up with something already before it happens to you! *cue scary music and lightning*

After implementing their own plan B for our economy, our government started working on their own plan C a couple of years ago. I’m not sure if they’ve had to implement any of it yet, but isn’t it reassuring that, in case of another economic collapse, our government at least has a plan in place? That sounds better than scrambling to fix things when the next AIG failure happens.

I guess what I’m trying to say is stop being lazy and have options. When life hands you lemons, make your lemonade. But make some fruit punch, too – because lemonade is nasty.

The Twilight Zone

IT'S A BLIZZARD
Like every other blogger in the south, I’m going to write about this weather we’ve been having. You know why we’re all writing about this Texas version of a blizzard? Because this weather is insane for us.

I can’t remember the last time we had a winter break because of actual winter weather. In high school, we used to get a week break in winter, but not because of weather – because the teacher’s were tired of us and needed a break (or so I think).

Since the last day I went to school (Monday) until today (Saturday) I’ve gotten next to nothing accomplished. Sure, I wrote a blog for a class. And, sure, I’m writing this blog for another class.  But stories written for the NTDaily? Zero. Times I’ve been to the gym? Zero. Time spent in front of the computer talking about the weather? Countless hours.

That doesn’t mean the cold weather has all been bad for me. I didn’t really have to go to the gym because I had to walk 45 minutes to work since my back tires are so bald I’d have never made it. I’ve gotten caught up on all of my TV shows I’ve fallen behind since this semester started. I even got in some quality video gaming!

Thanks, social media

But beyond all that, I definitely have social media to thank for my sanity. I could keep tabs on friends, businesses, sporting events, current events – everything I pay attention to really – with social media. I follow the teams I like on Twitter, I’m friends with people I care to listen to on Facebook and I keep tabs on current events through both.

What else could help you keep tabs on everything single-handedly and from the comfort of your couch? I went on a Rome re-watching marathon this week and didn’t move from my couch for a solid six hours. But I still knew that friends were going to Fry Street, Mubarak wouldn’t say he’d leave office early and that the Mavericks extended their hot streak (huzzah!).

Amazing.

This isn’t to praise social media as a jack-of-all-trades per se, but it does help with many facets of my life. I guess it just makes my life more convenient. And as a lazy man, convenience pretty much means the world to me.

I’m going to go off on a tangent here. So if you don’t care about basketball, stop reading now because this has nothing to do with class, social media or the weather.

Nonsense Dallas Mavericks talk

Amid Dirk’s return to the Mav’s lineup, I took a step back and also remembered why I hated (HATED) Erick Dampier. Have you seen Tyson Chandler’s stat line this year? He’s rebounding twice as well as Dampier ever did. And none of those sissy swat backs to Kidd or Dirk at the top of the lane, either. I’m talking jumping up and securing the ball. Coming down with it and then putting it back up. He’s a better scorer than Dampier. He’s a better rebounder than Dampier. He’s a better shot-blocker than Dampier. And, most importantly, he doesn’t look like Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Okay maybe that last one wasn’t that important, but still their resemblance is uncanny. See? Erick Dampier looks like a ninja turtle.

The _____ Amazing News Release Ever

I’ll let you decide how to fill in that blank. I was looking to add another press release to my PRoToolKit I made last semester, so I Googled ‘best news release’ to see what came up, and if any of my already written news releases met the criteria (they don’t).

Anyways, I stumbled across a Dean Rodgers article where he’s talking about the most amazing news release ever written. You can read his outlook on it over at KoiFish if you’d like. To make a long story short, it got me wondering if gimmicks really work in the media. As far as public relations goes, I always look at it as a very professional field, and I was surprised that this “press release” got any coverage at all.

Gimmicks are fun, don’t get me wrong – but do they work? Well, I guess to an extent they have to, because I’d never heard of Pitch Point Public before this, but now I know that it is a PR firm launched in 2007 and that it was founded by Mitch Delaplane, who has helped clients like Lexus, McDonald’s and BP (they probably could have used you this past year, Mitch!).

Another gimmick comes to mind. There was a man named Orson Welles, you might have heard of him. You know, the man who broadcasted War of the Worlds over the radio wreaking havoc on some American citizens’ psyche. Yeah, that guy. He’s immensely famous, so I guess they do work – if you do it right.

But companies don’t always do it right.

Take McDonald’s “The Lost Ring” campaign it tried out before the Beijing Olympics. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are becoming more popular, and I think they’re a very hip and cool alternative to normal advertising, but when I heard about “The Lost Ring” I didn’t know who to thank for it. I didn’t hear until after the Olympics had started that it was done by McDonald’s in conjunction with the Olympics. It took too long for the results to come out, and ultimately failed to garner as much attention as it should have.

That being said, it did put one more idea in my head in case I ever take that marketing/advertising job over one in PR. For me personally, different forms of advertising are eye-catching.

I’ve started drinking Miller High Life occasionally since their 1-second Super Bowl advertisement, where before I never touched the stuff. I just see gimmicks as a creative way to advertise, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

But at the end of the day, a gimmick is only such until people realize what it truly is, and then it ceases to become a gimmick and becomes everyday advertising, which makes them hard to sustain – but I guess that’s why I find them so interesting.

Is there such a thing as too much social media?

Social Media sites are like vegetables – you can never have too many

According to Dave Folkens over at Online Marketing Blog, there is. I agree with his article to an extent. Social media is everywhere. You have Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Quora, Myspace (dying) as well as countless other sites. Sure, some are professionally oriented and others are geared more toward everyday users – but they are all social media.

Dave goes into specifics as far as time spent on social media goes. He cites “22 percent of time spent online” is on social media networks. I’m sure I spend at least double that percentage of my time on social media. If you count my phone usage, it’s probably closer to 70 percent.

That’s nearly three quarters of my internet consumption. Where do I find time to look at icanhascheezburger.com and ESPN? No wonder I’m not level 85 in World of Warcraft yet!

Woe is me.

I get it – you spend a lot of time on social media. So what?

So the question remains. Is there such a thing as too much social media? It feels like the new flavor of the month for the public relations field is social media. It will eventually slow down (I think), but until then, I say if you have the resources, hit up every social media site you can. 

That doesn’t mean companies should hire a social media person if it’s not in their budget. And it definitely doesn’t mean if your company has a social media person that they should exhaust every social media site around. But optimizing the sites that work best for your company or organization should be a top priority.

Dave touches on that by asking you if the social media sites “generate enough direct revenue to offset the staff time required?” 

Valid question, but how measurable is that? Just because you don’t see a profit from Social Media site A today, doesn’t mean you won’t see huge growth when it blows up in two months. And now you’ve been there for months posting your organization’s news and that’s what people will see when they start joining.

On top of that, most social media sites are 100 percent free. That’s 100 percent free publicity, even if only one person sees it. That one person could tell a friend who only uses their social media site of choice to look for organizations. Do you have a presence there, too?

Ever heard of Vampire Freaks? I hadn’t either, but a 10 second Google search turned it up as a “gothic industrial social networking community.” According to the website, Vampire Freaks is 10 years old with two million subscribers. If your company is selling lip rings and angsty t-shirts, this would be an amazing place to connect with the people you advertise to. If you’re trying to offload sports memorabilia…maybe pass on this one.

All in all, I think it’s just as important to keep niche social media in your sights as it is to keep the major social media sites there, but how you do that should be planned out according to your company and its goals – and I think that’s probably the hardest part.