Catastrophe Creates Fodder for the Press Release Mill. Nothing screams "opportunity" for PR people than a high-profile natural disaster. Case in point: the day after the
6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Seattle last week, we searched keyword "earthquake" on PR newswire and came up with 29 new press releases.
There were damage reports, statistics, and earthquake-readiness advice from everyone from the Professional Insurance Agents of New York State to Lowe's Improvement Warehouse.
We breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Seattle-based PR firm Parker LePla's "extensive snow-globe collection came through intact."
No one, however, creatively exploited the quake as well as myGoals.com, a Web site that helps people realize all types of personal ambition, be it career advancement or more
power-walking time on the treadmill.
The Phoenix-based company posted a release pointing folks to a special area of their site where you can find a "pre-made goal plan" with tips on earthquake, tornado, and
hurricane preparation. VP of Marketing Greg Helmstetter said that the content was on the site when it beta-launched three weeks ago and calls the timing of Mother Nature's fury
"bizarre."
"If we had sent out a press release when there was no earthquake going on, no one would have picked it up," he says.
Hmmm. Could it be that the folks at myGoals.com engineered the calamity to get some groundbreaking press of their own? We'll just say that whenever we see them post a release
about Tsunamis, we PRN staffers will head for the hills. (Helmstetter, myGoals.com, 480/513-2681)
On the Web, Self-Deprecation Gets You Everywhere.There's no shortage of big-company-trashing Web sites out there - usually the projects of excitable,
pimply-faced teenagers with lots of free time on their hands (just check out microsoftsucks.com and dellblows.com.)
But it's rare that a big company would cook up a site trashing itself to get buzz. Last fall, ESPN unveiled a TV campaign featuring a babe-alicious twenty-something
named "Kathi" who's made it her life's work to keep people from visiting ESPN.com and visit her site, kathicam.com, instead. Concocted by Los Angeles-based Ground Zero Advertising
Agency, kathicam.com is a real (fake) site that excoriates ESPN.com - yet links to it dozens of times. And it's resulted in far more eyeballs than Creative Director Kirk Souder
ever anticipated.
"We were blurring the lines between reality and fiction to see if some of the ESPN die-hards would go to [ESPN.com] and it turns out a hell of a lot of people have shown up,"
says. "Fifty guys have even sent in photos to try and date Kathi."
More than 1.5 million visitors have clicked on the site 5.5 million times, according to Ground Zero Brand Director Todd Gray. "The average person clicks on three pages," he
says. "When you consider that the whole site is ten pages, not to mention it's a joke, that's pretty good." (Souder, Gray, Ground Zero, 310/881-8000.)