While it’s helpful to be inspired by great work, sometimes the fear of doing something really, really bad can be even more powerful.
The Bad Pitch Blog pulls no punches in outing terrible PR people and their cringe-worthy work, including news releases with headlines like “Black Author’s Book Teaser Will Make Your Kids a Slave to Reading.”
We can’t make this stuff up, you guys. See for yourself at badpitchblog.com.
Then refresh your skills by downloading the BDN PR Toolkit: http://bit.ly/1ALKXdj. It will help you work more effectively with the aerospace and defense news media – and, hopefully, keep you off the badpitchblog.
Up next? Bad advertising.
This is the purview of adrants.com. In fairness, Adrants covers everything – the good, the bad and the ugly. And while there are plenty of businesses exercising poor judgment, when it comes to aviation, more than a few airlines are getting it wrong. Air New Zealand promoted low prices by saying, “Fares lower than your grandma’s boobs,’ with an unfortunate graphic to help make the point. Sadly, many of the airline examples are not just bad, they are misogynistic, too. But let’s not pick on the airlines – the aerospace industry as a whole has plenty of “what not to do” examples, including these from AgustaWestland and UTC Aerospace Systems.
Finally, let’s close on a positive note.
While marketers may find it interesting to look at bad ad work, perhaps our time would be better spent learning about tools and techniques that can actually enable sales. That means trading our sledgehammers for magnets, and enticing customers with content marketing. It also means listening to advice from people like Jay Baer at convinceandconvert.com, and getting inspired exploring information-rich websites like hubspot.com and marketo.com. These are some of our team’s go-to resources, and we hope they help you, too. Don't forget -- the BDN Marketing Tool Kit has tons of useful resources, too. It's definitely worth a look, and everything is available free of charge.