Good Morning America Says WTF!

Exploiting dead celebrities reaches to the heights.

Just this morning a colleague at GMA showed us this pitch. Normally we wouldn’t OUT someone as quickly as this – but such an evil waste of paper and digits is beyond bad taste.

Start the day off with a story about AN Smith. Worst part is how badly written the thing is. This is also one of the longest press releases anybody has had to read. As if it merits length!

Also: if you are trying to be ironic you have to be funny. And not one line in the below is.

Subject: Anna Nicole Smith Would Be Six Feet Under If She Used KeepYouSafe.com

For further information, contact:
Steven Blinn
BlinnPR
212-675-4777
steven@blinnpr.com

ANNA NICOLE SMITH WOULD BE SIX FEET UNDER IF SHE HAD KEEPYOUSAFE.COM
Online Safe Deposit Boxes Help Families Avoid Ugly Legal Hassles

New York, NY - February 27, 2007

What do former playmate Anna Nicole Smith and Godfather of Soul James Brown have in common? No, Brown didn't father Smith's child (at least as far as we know.)

But even if they didn't get together in life they share the same problem in death -- their embalmed bodies are trapped in legal limbos. And both could have been resting in peace by now if they'd had Online Safety Deposit Boxes from KeepYouSafe.com.

Instead of being quietly laid to rest the embalmed bodies of the two deceased celebrities have become the ropes in legal tugs of war over their estates, turning their already festive legacies into increasingly strange sideshow acts. Their truly private business could have been kept out of the public eye if they'd just planned ahead - and then stashed their updated wills somewhere secure and accessible.

KeepYouSafe.Com provides free Online Safe Deposit Boxes and other services to individuals and businesses that wish to securely store important records and other vital information. Owners may grant access to a Box to family members and trusted friends. Information stored in the Box is 100% safe from tampering or any other threats to a document's legal integrity and can be accessed from anywhere, via the Internet."

People across the country have been transfixed by the bizarre legal wranglings over the burial plans of Anna Nicole Smith and James Brown, but these two high-profile cases have highlighted an issue that many Americans often avoid thinking about - their burial and internment plans, and the timeliness of their wills," said Eric Wolbrom, COO and co-founder of KeepYouSafe.

"People absolutely need to take care of the business of their lives now, draft their wills and document their final wishes and place that information somewhere that's secure but accessible.""Parents especially need to have their affairs in order. It's unpleasant to think about where you want to be buried and how your estate should be handled, but it's a necessary chore and something that you do out of love for your family."

Presumably both Smith and Brown each knew where they wanted to be laid to rest and how they wanted to take care of those who survived them. If they had settled their affairs before they passed away and left clear instructions in a KeepYouSafe.com Online Security Box, their families could now be focused on healing rather than litigation.

And, in Smith's case, there's a special bonus: had she told her family where she wanted to be buried we would all have been spared the overwrought theatrics and judicial bawling of the Judge Larry show.

As most of the world knows, Smith died in a Florida hotel on February 8, with legal disputes soon following in Florida, California and the Bahamas over where she should be buried and who should have custody of her infant daughter. At last count, three men claim to be the father of the child.James Brown passed away on December 25, 2006. His body also remains unburied until questions involving his estate, the actual paternity of those claiming to be his children, the legality of his fourth marriage and where he should be laid to rest have been resolved.

Online Safe Deposit Boxes are obviously not going to magically sort out the many complications of lives lived at full throttle. But Brown left a will that had not been updated since his now-contested marriage to his fourth wife and their birth of their child. Smith's will was drafted prior to the birth of her daughter and the death of her son last September."

In addition to our Online Safe Deposit boxes we provide information that helps people really think through their planning for the future and for emergencies," said Wolbrom. "We like to think that if Smith and Brown were clients, they'd have left their families with happy memories and clear guidance regarding their final wishes."Plus most people would probably agree that they don't want their last decisions to be made by Judge Larry.About

KeepYouSafe.com
KeepYouSafe.Com provides Online Safe Deposit Boxes and other services to (LIVE AND DEAD, says us) individuals and businesses who wish to securely store important records and other information and be able to access those stored records from anywhere, at any time, via the Internet. The personal information stored in an Online Safe Deposit Box is available to the box's owners only, unless individual box owners choose to grant access to family members and trusted friends. Each box's contents are protected by the same strong encryption and other security technologies used by the U.S. military to secure top-secret data.

Information Survival, LLC, provides the KeepYouSafe Online Safe Deposit Box service.

The service was designed and developed by a team of certified security professionals with decades of deep experience in keeping critical data safe and secure. Information Survival LLC is a privately held security company based in New York.

###

Again, worst thing about it is how wordy the darn thing is. It’s Mark Twain all over the place: If he had more time he would have written less.

But Online Safe Deposit Box and “where should she be buried” are such a yucky connection that at first we thought maybe Steve Blinn was just having a bad day.

Then we saw how wide he went with it. This e-mail arrived a few seconds later from a fellow PR guy who says Network World is already yelling about this story—and that Blinn has removed it already from his site. Not only tasteless, but wimpy too! (You know our feeling: do something, stick with it, so WTF Part 2.)

“Getting your own brand of tastelessness noticed amid the infinitely tasteless Anna Nicole Smith business would seem to be an exercise in futility, or at least one attempted only by seasoned professionals such as those at Fox News.”

Second thoughts make us laugh.

Also, what made us crack up was an addendum on Steve’s e-mail: REMOVAL INSTRUCTIONS:
To remove yourself from this media list, please send an email to steven@blinnpr.com with REMOVE (KYS) in the subject.

Remove? No way man. We want to see what other damage he can pull off.

Hello Steven Blinn (who according to O’Dwyers got the account a little over a month ago). Please stop sending e-mails immediately. Leave Anna Nicole to rest already.

You are officially Slick!

With awe: Your headshaking friends at BPB

UPDATE: Network World News Editor Paul McNamara was way ahead of us on this one. Be sure to check the comments on McNamara’s post for the client’s response.

Hmmm. Good Morning America, Engadget AND Network World? That's targeted.

Not only is this pitch tasteless spam, it’s unoriginal. Every time a celebrity dies people pitch around it.

This makes us all the more confident in outing this pitch.