Amy Winehouse: Death of marketing or the marketing of death?
Paul Smith, the former journalist turned PR who heads the content and crisis management team at Citypress, takes a look at the lack of subtlety shown by the media over Amy Winehouse’s death.
Common sense, tact, timing, class.
You won’t find them on any teaching module but they are required to be a good PR consultant or journalist.
There are some things that shouldn’t have to be explained. They should just feel wrong, seem off, taste like the nastiest foot you have ever put in your mouth (if you do that kind of thing).
And if they don’t, and the collective conscience of the internet needs to tell you why they are, then you possibly lack one of the above. Take your pick.
Or take a look a look at these pictures of Amy Winehouse’s family and consider how much you might cheer them up – with the assertion that the average small business owner could learn a lot from their daughter’s death.
I imagine Mitch might embrace you, talk about collaborating on a Powerpoint that he can take on the road and discuss how Amy would be proud that hairdressing franchisees see the light through her addiction.
At what point did that Huffington Post blog seem like a good idea and how many people did it go through before it was posted?
The Huffington Post isn’t the Daily Mail, I’m pretty sure it isn’t just trolling for link bait and the author’s apology in the comments seems genuine, if naïve. Doesn’t make it any better. I read it twice while gnawing the skin off my own knuckles.
Maybe the small businesses which could learn something from the singer’s death should aim even higher and learn from a big company.
There’s many branches to the argument that anyone writing about the death of a celebrity is doing it in their own interest; to sell papers, get hits on a blog, associate themselves with the story of the day.
But if you can’t see the difference between the examples linked above and this then you may lack one of the four traits I mentioned. It’s irrelevant what you think about Amy Winehouse or the manner of her passing, there are subtleties to communicating around death which you need to grapple with before posting or tweeting.
The internet has given us all a publishing platform. Some of us don’t deserve it.
To read more blogs from Paul Smith visit thedrum.co.uk/blogs/keepcalm