• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • getgood.com
  • Privacy & Disclosure
  • GDPR/CCPA Compliance
  • Contact

Marketing Roadmaps

What’s the buzz – more examples from the bad pitch file

February 1, 2009 by Susan Getgood

My goal here on Marketing Roadmaps is to provide guidance and examples that will help my readers do social media “right.” That’s why I usually mask company, product and agency names from the bad pitch examples, and focus on the pitch, not the products.

From time to time, something crosses the transom that demands a different approach. I’ve got a couple for you today.

The first is for a new social network for kids. In my opinion, this one fails all around — pitch, product and PR. Here’s the pitch:

buuz11

And here’s the product:

buuuz21

And here are the problems.

Let’s start with the pitch, which implies that this is a product for kids with references to Barney and the Wiggles. Yet, when  you go to the site, it seems far more like a dating site for teens. The wiggles here aren’t the ones singing “Fruit Salad” if you know what I mean. Was this pitch slanted young to appeal to mom bloggers, even though the product clearly isn’t? That sort of deception is bad practice at best. Possibly unethical.

1book3The product. BUUUZ. Sounds like “booze”  which makes “message in the bottle” a questionable tagline. What sort of message in the bottle and just how much should we drink before we get the message?

More like spin the bottle….Do kids really need their own version of match.com? Or is it just one more fertile hunting ground for predators?

Now I can see how they ended up with the name. The domain name was available and someone fell in love with the logo and the idea of “UUU” create the buzz. But domain name availability and a graphic presentation are two of the WORST reasons for choosing a product name. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

Because no matter how you spin it, and more on that in a minute, there’s no way “BUUUZ” is pronounced anything other than booze. It’s simple English grammar.

And that just doesn’t cut it for a site for kids. No matter how you choose to rationalize it.

As the PR flack did when one of the parent bloggers who received this pitch asked why they gave the site the name and tagline they did. A one line response, it completely dismissed the concerns and insulted the blogger.  The email equivalent of Dan Aykroyd’s rejoinder in the early days of Saturday Night Live: “Jane you ignorant slut.”

Now, I can see why one might be defensive about BUUUZ. It can be tiring hopping around on one leg. But, responding to criticism in a hostile fashion is both rude and stupid. I hate to say it, given how strongly I believe in active engagement, but it would be better to just ignore the email and simply be considered rude.

This campaign is one that I definitely vote off the island. Bad pitch, questionable product and offensive PR. Three strikes. Out.

Our other example today is a an inauguration-related pitch. Sort of.

joesteeth1

This program for Trident gum fails in a number of ways. First, it trivializes the change we celebrated on January 20th with President Obama’s inauguration. “Chomping for change?” Please.

Next, as I’ve commented before, campaigns that co-opt celebrities without their permission are distasteful.  Don’t like ’em. Slimy.

Finally, think about what they’re asking people to do for a pack of gum. A 50 cent pack of gum. Seems like an awful lot of work for a single pack of gum.

It doesn’t say much for American culture that quite a few people did it, but that doesn’t make the campaign good. I didn’t see any coverage of this program on the 500+ blogs I read, including many parent blogs.

If you only remember a few things from what you read here, I hope you remember this:

  • Respect the bloggers. Even if they occasionally piss you off, they are your customers. Even if they are wrong, they are right.
  • Add value. Give bloggers a reason to write. A thin storyline and a pack of gum? Not so much.

I’ll have some more on how to add value in my next post.

Related

Filed Under: Blogger relations, Blogging, PR

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dan says

    February 12, 2009 at 9:29 am

    Not only are these pitches terrible, but they feel like spam. I wouldn’t want my company represented this way.

    What are your thoughts on pay-per-placement agencies like Publicity Guaranteed?

  2. Susan Getgood says

    February 12, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Thanks for your comment Dan. I’m curious — are you a client or employee of Publicity Guaranteed? Just wondered.

    As to my opinion of pay per placement, I don’t think it is any less broken than most traditional PR. It may be cheaper, but it isn’t any closer to paying for results than a retainer.

    Results aren’t placement or clips or the ephemeral “awareness.” Results are leads. Conversions. Sales. When I was at my last corporate job, we maintained a healthy investment in PR because we could prove that when we did a major campaign, traffic to our website and leads spiked immediately afterward. Predictably, every time, and by about the same percentage.

    Those are the kind of results we should be looking at.

  3. Along Parker says

    May 15, 2009 at 12:40 am

    Hi Susan,

    People’s opinion on what makes a good name vary. For example, Coca-Cola or “coke” doesn’t seem like a good idea to me, with the cocaine similarity and all…. But who’s to argue against such a corporate giant and well established trademark.

    I personally thought BUUUZ was pronounced Buzz but that’s just me. When I think back to my childhood, I remember being excited about finding a long lost message in a bottle and I used to go on “adventures” along the beach trying to find one. I think the idea of using messages in a bottle is neat and the website name reminds me of “buzz marketing”. I don’t know if that’s what the creators had in mind but it seems to me like a good play on words.

    I had a look at the website and I agree with their claim that it is a lot safer than Facebook, MySpace and all the other social networks out there that are filled with pedophiles looking to get at your kids.

  4. Susan Getgood says

    May 17, 2009 at 12:04 pm

    I have a sneaky suspicion that the comment above is a bit of astroturf.

    What do you think readers?

Primary Sidebar

 

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Recent Posts

  • Merging onto the Metaverse – the Creator Economy and Web 2.5
  • Getting ready for the paradigm shift from Web2 to Web3
  • The changing nature of influence – from Lil Miquela to Fashion Ambitionist

Speaking Engagements

An up-to-date-ish list of speaking engagements and a link to my most recent headshot.

My Book



genconnectU course: Influencer Marketing for Brands

Download the course.
Use code Susan10 for 10% off.

genconnectU course: Influencer Marketing for Influencers

Download the course.
Use code Susan10 for 10% off.
Susan Getgood
Tweets by @sgetgood

Subscribe to Posts via Email

Marketing Roadmaps posts

Categories

BlogWithIntegrity.com

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Lifestyle Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}