Unsuccessful PR Efforts

TALES FROM THE BLUE BIN:  TWO REALLY BAD PROMOTIONAL IDEAS

Saying something loudly doesn't make it true. Doubly so when it is the printed word doing the yelling.

I was given a card (pictured top) to keep so that I wouldn't forget the show I had just paid to see. Since then the card has been pinned to my corkboard wall. It has been up there for a while.  It has taken a couple of Starbuck splashes over that time.
I took it down when I realized the card's message hadn't worked. I can't tell you what show I was given this at. An art show? A play? A dance performance? Hmm. Probably something at Harbourfront. Won't ever know now, it has been moved into my blue bin.
Two years ago I was on assignment in the Yucatan. Cave Diving. One of the caves came to the surface near the beach community at Tulum. We stripped out of our wetsuits and drove to the coast to enjoy the sun, the open space and the blue sea (all the opposite of what we had been scuba diving through). Walking the beach I took this picture of a bench in the white sand.

The chair's signature -- The Only Chair You Will Remember For the Rest of Your Life -- is a lie. Today I was warehousing photos onto a backup hard drive (my digital blue bin) when I looked at the picture once again. Had to check my notes to see where I had taken the picture ... I had forgotten the chair, the beach and even the country I was in, when I took the photo.
In the world of PR there is a lot of borrowing. Here are two ideas that you don’t want to sneak out of my wastebasket.