Wednesday, April 4, 2007

She's no Dale Carnegie graduate

A Vonage PR rep certainly didn't win my friendship with this press pitch:

"Hi Dena,

At cocktail parties, around the water cooler or over grande lattes at the local coffee shop, everyone loves a well-informed conversationalist. But who these days has time to catch the evening news or read the paper - or even boot up a computer ... Your latte will be cold by the time you find the news you're looking for."

What? NO ONE HAS TIME TO READ THE PAPER?!!? No one has time to boot up a computer!?!?

You're sending a PR pitch - which goes on for paragraphs, I must add - to a newspaper, and the "hook" is that no one reads newspapers!?!? How much thought went into THAT tactic? I forwarded the note to advertising and suggested we sell an ad to Vonage.

Is this proposed response to the PR woman OK?

Hi, Hillary.
A press release about how people don't have time to read newspapers sent to a newspaper to tout a competitive service?
Right.

Dena

3 comments:

Unknown said...

They should stick with the yodeling campaign. It's stuck in my head even as I type this.

Dena Rosenberry said...

There's the Vonage Yodel
The Yahoo Yodel
The Ricola Yodel
...
Anyone else? What would The Gaz yodel sound like?

Dena Rosenberry said...

I did just find this:

http://www.amazon.com/Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo-Secret-History-Yodeling-Around/dp/0415939909