Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Today’s generation is more obsessed with materialism and consumerism than ever before. This much, we know - it’s one of the truisms of our age, not least because of the unquestioning way the media parrots this very message on a regular basis. See, for example, the Daily Mail, July 23rd...

Of course, regular readers would have spotted that the ‘study’ was conducted by savviloans.co.uk - a personal loans company, who you might argue have a strong commercial incentive to emphasise the importance of keeping up with our neighbours, and buying things we can’t afford.

A quick google for ‘savviloans.co.uk press release’ finds us the source of the story - it really is that simple....

[Ah yes, churnalism. Arghhhhh - JD]

It's the golden rule and the core of all communications etiquette: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything. On Tuesday, Kelly Blazek, who runs the Cleveland Job Bank, learned that lesson the hard way when her email smackdown of a young job seeker named Diana Mekota, who contacted her through LinkedIn, went viral.

"Love the sense of entitlement in your generation. And therefore I enjoy denying your invite," read Blazek's poison pen letter, in part. "You're welcome for your humility lesson of the year. Don't ever reach out to senior practitioners again and assume their carefully curated list of connections is available to you, just because you want to build your network."

Mekota posted the complete email on Reddit, Imgur, and Facebook, along with these comments: "Guess us twenty somethings should bow down to senior professional because clearly we have nothing to offer," and "Let's call this lady out." From there, it was like a torch thrown into a desert of parched tumbleweeds...

...What happens to those companies that make mistakes on a much greater scale and cost their company millions in clout or (gulp) dollars? They go down in history as the biggest marketing mistakes of our time. It's hard to move on when you're being cited as the example of what not to do, huh? We looked into the biggest mistakes from many popular brands -- but glossed over any smaller companies because we don't want to hurt the little guy ;-) Keep reading for a little entertainment, and some reminders of what you should never do to ensure you don't repeat these mistakes yourself....