From an inspired wiseass at Collateral Damage, a humorous look at the “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” backfires of the year.
Except, (and this is what makes them funny), none of them seemed like good ideas at the time, and people who make more money in a week than you ever will in your lifetime executed these ideas when, in fact, they should have executed themselves.
Don’t believe me? Raise your hands if you thought that having Jay Leno on at 10 p.m. every single weeknight was a good idea. Don’t see no hands. This is not 20-20 hindsight, this is WTF (more on WTF later…) are they thinking? Who’s gonna watch? And the guy who made that decision is still employed.
As to Tiger Woods, this is sadly shaping up to be the biggest PR self-destruct of all-time. Seriously, bigger than OJ. Just like with The Juice and Michael Jordan (perhaps the two other most successfully-created PR images), it appears that we really knew nothing about the guy except that was a great golfer. He has surrounded himself with the best PR people and image-crafters, and he and they did a great job. Tiger parsed out just enough to reinforce the glowing PR, he was and remains the finest athlete on the planet, and his was easily the most marketable image, emphasis on image and was, out there. But, even if he successfully returns to golf, what advertisers will want him as spokesperson. Extenz? See what I mean?
And maybe I’m being too tough on pork producers for challenging the term ‘swine flu’.
But sometimes the would-be cure is worse than the, pardon the expression, ‘disease’. To wit:
“Pork Industry Has Beef With Swine Flu (NPR)”
“Swine flu not kosher in Israel (Reuters)”.
Which, of course, prompted yet another wiseass to think like a PR guy:
Some days you just can’t win for losing. Does this mean that our weekly bacon blog is on the endangered species list?
Oh, and let’s not forget the Wisconsin group responsible for promoting tourism in their state. As their first act, they created the Wisconsin Tourism Federation. Must I spell it out for you?