Faster Than Real Time – A Journey into the Fantastic (Tech PR)
Posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
The client: “Our player downloads videos in ‘faster than real time.’ “ In a flash I understood Einstein’s Special Relativity. By using this product, a customer could race back in time, growing younger by the moment (hopefully stopping before the egg stage). Alas, all its maker meant: The video player accepted compressed files.
Lacking an actual product, this same client — EMC3 — later showed up for Andy Pargh’s “Gadget Guru” network feed, bearing a cardboard facsimile of their hardware for national TV audiences. In their defense, Andy did say beforehand to “bring your box.” But I suspect he was speaking figuratively. To pacify a fuming Andy Pargh (”I meant bring the video player, not a goddam piece of cardboard!”), the client borrowed a Sony, spat on an EMC3 logo and slapped that on the front, licking the logo between takes to prevent it from peeling off “on air.” To this day I marvel that Pargh didn’t toss us off the set.
EMC3 has long since vanished, leaving behind a long trail of unpaid vendor invoices (not mine, by some stroke of luck). The guy who designed the VCR-like cardboard box never got paid, and lost his business as a result. Hence I have no qualms naming EMC3 here.
I’ve seen some bizarre promotions in my time, but the PR campaign for EMC3’s “faster than real time” video player/recorder wins the Oscar. My antenna should have gone up when I read the “five years as a ski bumb” bit in the CEO’s bio. From then on, it was one big snow job.
Don’t laugh: Many established companies commit the same error (or sin) by making unsupported claims about their product or service, for example that it’s “unique” or the “first of its kind.” If that’s true, then fine. But it rarely is true, nor is it necessary to say so to win a journalist’s or a customer’s attention. Many of the most successful companies — think Microsoft or Google — simply do a better job of packaging others’ pioneering efforts.
Be careful of going out on a limb in pursuit of being “first” or “unique.” It can backfire. When an inflated product or service claim crosses their screens, many journalists immediately turn skeptical and revert to the Napoleonic Code — “Guilty until proven innocent.”
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