Online Public Relations Thoughts

Articles like this are good reminders. I've referred to them in the past. These 15+ products were never born in the marketplace but flacked as solutions. They came, and some never quite went like Duke Nukem Forever. Year after year, the maker promised an introduction of that game, which has never happened and never will happen.

The reminder is simple. As PR practitioners, we shouldn't drink from the bubbly fountain of promise that marketers quaff. We deal with the same media time and again. We have to look them in the eye and maintain their credibility. There is a distance between reporting what a company intends to do and plugging the virtues of a not-ready-for-primetime product. There also is counsel that tells company executives not to promote products that aren't ready. I suspect in some of these cases a PR person did that and was ignored.

There are instances where engineers fall in love with their ideas and companies get carried away. PR should be a restraint that protects credibility and reputation and keeps companies from putting themselves in untenable positions. In the case of this vaporware, it didn't work, if any practitioner tried.