Last August, I received what can only be classified as the worst pitch (and dumbest idea) (and most greedy letter) that I have ever gotten. And this time, unlike the ones you guys forward to Kevin and me, it came directly TO me. Which makes me think that the two people behind it were not only naïve, but also fabulously stupid.
I waited until now to post because I truly wanted to get in touch with these folks to get some questions answered and although everyone they CC’d was wildly writing each other dumbfounded about receiving it, the twosome who hit the enter key and unleashed the following on the world –ultimate pitch for something not deserved –never wrote us back.
So here’s to Liz Flowers and Scott Bland – let's call hem BLAND FLOWERS - who though it sounds likely did not make this up, and who are receiving the BPB’s brand new honor of WORST PITCH IN THE WORLD. And incidentally, there’s not a whiff of the PR “specialty” to be found anywhere here.
From: Elizabeth Flowers [mailto:weddingsponsorship@gmail.com]
Subject: Wedding Sponsorship
Hello, My name is Liz Flowers and my fiancé’s name is Scott Bland. We are a "not your average couple," looking for a "not so average, 'think out of the box' type company" who would like to obtain some great exposure while truly showing pure generosity.
We will be getting married on November 15, 2008 at half past one o'clock in the afternoon at Cornerstone Harvest Church in Lima, Ohio. Our wedding is going to be an "open ceremony," which means anyone can attend!! Cornerstone has well over two thousand members. Mind you, this does NOT include our families and friends that will be attending that are outside of our church. We do not desire the most extravagant display, but we do desire a day that will be memorable for anyone that attends while being able to start our lives together debt free!
With Scott being an inner city teacher for over 15 years and myself being a contracted administrative assistant, we are not gracing the covers of Forbes magazine, and on an average, the cost of a wedding is around $15,000 to $20,000 dollars.
With that being said, we are seeking sponsorship in exchange for media coverage and targeted publicity. Here's how this would work...
We have built a wedding website that every guest will receive information on. The wedding site, www.scottandliz.org, not only features information about our special day, but will also feature an established page/link specifically for those companies that would like to take part in this offer. Your company will be able to offer our guests special discounts, if you choose, and a link to your personal business site! In addition, other ways to garner publicity are at the event itself:
*There will be mention of your business name in our programs.
*Your Business Name will be displayed on our church media screens
*We will place your business cards on the tables at our reception.
*Our DJ will have a special "sponsor toast."
*We will do our best to obtain media coverage
This would be an exceptional venue to showcase your business and demonstrate your company's generosity. Our guests on average will be young, single, and or married professionals, which is a perfect target audience for your business!!
Our goal is $10,000, which we believe, is very doable since it is close to the end of the year and would be a great way to write some things off. Also, our wedding date of Nov 15th is 2 weeks away from THEE biggest shopping day of the year! Wouldn’t it be great if your business were at the forefront of consumers’ minds?
Thank you in advance for your consideration!!
If you would like to take part in this sponsorship program, call me at XX, email me at weddingsponsorship@gmail.com, or simply go to www.scottandliz.org and click on “Wedding Sponsors” for details on where to send your gift.
Appreciatively,
Liz Flowers and Scott Bland
Ok, now let’s review:
Besides the bad typos “THEE” biggest shopping day and a bunch of others that are Palin-worthy phraseologies, I want to rant about the fact they even sent it!
First, ARE THEY KIDDING? Secondly, and this is what irks me the most, why should they get sponsorship as opposed to the million other wedded couples?
And #3: The line “we are not gracing the covers of Forbes magazine” makes it seem like because they are not famous it makes them worthy. Dudes, maybe if you’d GOTTEN some press and had one angle that differentiated yourself besides “We’re worthy” of Wayne’s World paraphrasing, you might make sense. But that?
Fourth and most of all, when you think about the nerve it took to write this, calling themselves “the perfect target audience for your business” means these mental midgets have no idea what business—or email—or requests—or life…is all about.
As we begin a new year, I beseech us all to really THINK about what they send out to the ether. I am sure these guys thought “What the hey,” everyone is doing it and that somehow companies would go Aw how cute and crawl out of the woordwork to help them get their wedded asses on the road to not-having-to-payness.
Oh, gees, and the fact they think being churchgoers makes them special bothers me in ways I don’t think I can put into words. Alas, let me try. The Cornerstone Church, where these two dumbasses go every Sunday (or probably just on High Holidays, ha ha) “has well over two thousand members.” As if that’s supposed to get the products sent immediately from us to them—because we’d want the churchgoers to TAKE our stuff in hopes they will someday be a purchaser.
Really? Well I’ve got a member, too. And it doesn’t get any prizes for EXISTING.
Have I said enough? Doubtful.
I want to share with you what some of the recipients – all people who rep products or companies – commented to each other about these two. [For the record, I checked and they did get married since they deserve each other, although I can’t find a single company that jumped in and helped them from this FAILED Spam.]:
"I think the whole thing is a scam."
"Don’t want to get another message like this ever again."
"I'm sick thinking they actually did this."
"Everyone wants something from nothing. Who raised these two?"
& my favorite of all
"This has to be the dumbest couple in the world. Perhaps I should email them and ask them if they want to sponsor me by paying my mortgage and credit card debt."
Perhaps. But I hope that posting this today will make even one person think before they ask for something they don’t deserve. I know it did me. I stopped asking for Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and some TARP money.
Happy New Year! Let's make it one where we think twice before pitching wildly.
Twitter @laermer
Star Jones became famous for getting wedding sponsors -- and many a couple has tried to follow in her path. I've never heard of any successes
ReplyDelete"Wouldn’t it be great if your business were at the forefront of consumers’ minds?"
ReplyDeleteWhat fools. Shouldn't the two lovebirds, Liz and Scott, be at the forefront of their consumers'...errr, guests' minds? Not some cheesy, dirty bowling alley?
I checked out their sponsor page and it actually looks like some failing local businesses bit on this scam - check it out.
Wouldn't it be great if you could talk about the bad pitch without the backhanded insult to Sarah Palin? I mean, come on, you're not better than that? I have been reading this blog for a bit and am surprised that you allowed your normally in-depth analysis to become so trite.
ReplyDeleteI come here for great advice about bad pitches, which is hard to come by. Risking audience alienation when your product -- in this case your blog -- isn't politically oriented seems, well, bad public relations.
I agree with the comment on the Palin bit. That was cheap on my part. I do have to say I'm still angry about her--the fact is, there is something to be said about the way she lashed out on "community activists". It was tawdry and as someone who respects....well, you know the rest! Anyway, thanks for reading. I appreciate THAT.
ReplyDeleteWow. I was embarrassed for them, until I saw on the site that their scheme paid off, at least somewhat. No matter what anyone says now, I'm sure they feel vindicated.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Richard, there is a new Blogger comment option that eliminates the need to open a new window. Read more on the Blogger blog.
While she was at it, why didnt' she offer to embroider the sponsors' logos onto her wedding dress, or maybe on top of the cake? Maybe when they have offspring (scary thought), they'll name them after companies that sponsor the prenatal care or delivery.
ReplyDelete"why should they get sponsorship as opposed to the million other wedded couples?"
ReplyDeleteThat's a valid point, but I guess the entrepreneur's answer is: "Yeah, why, INDEED!" Why AREN'T weddings sponsored? They are HUGELY expensive, and why should couples start their lives deeply in debt (or why should the wife's family take the $10-20,000 hit, as is traditional?)
The fact that THIS WORKED and they actually got some sponsors should be making a LOT of entrepreneurs think twice about becoming a Wedding Sponsorship Broker (tm - just coined that. LOL)
twitter= @nhprman
Something's not right here. Husband Scott's an inner city school teacher? Have you looked at a map of Ohio? Lima's in the middle of nowhere. Unless Scott's commuting 90 minutes to Toledo or two hours to Columbus, that "inner school teacher" line is a bunch of BS.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder what else they invented, or worse, if this is actually a scam and there IS NO LIZ AND SCOTT or a wedding?
Dave, I admire your skepticism, and wish reporters would be as skeptical as you.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, I actually know someone in Ohio, though not this guy, who (for some ridiculous reason) drives LONGER than 90 mins. to get to work. You'd think there'd be something closer to home, but jobs there are hard to come by. So are inner-city schools in rural Ohio.
As for the scam angle, it's clear from their Website that donations WERE given from businesses (who were acknowledged on the site) and that the event was opened to the public, because all of the public interest generated by news stories.
So if someone showed up and found no wedding, we'd have heard about it by now online or in the press.
Is the typo in your rant intentional: woordwork?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100 percent, this is a stupid idea, a terrible letter, and it’s poorly written. What irks me, as a young PR professional is how other professionals harp on not making typos – we all do it.
Wow... I actually think their idea was valid, though very, VERY poorly executed.
ReplyDeleteWhy?
They DO have a story there, being an 'inner city teacher' and all that, but they didn't justify it. As you asked, "why should they get sponsorship as opposed to the million other wedded couples"? If they showed a real rationale (venture to guess they could've), it might've gotten something good for them. Unfortunately, much like many other people who think they understand PR, they don't understand (or try to) why companies would want exposure. On top of that, the typos are just inexcusable. I mean, isn't your fiance a TEACHER!?
That said, I'd like to call your bad wedding sponsorship pitch, and raise you one from the spring, that Gawker covered. The Bride-to-be (next month!) actually WORKS in the PR world (at one of your competitors), and got outed by a fashion mag editor. There's an 'ask', but not even a pitch in there.
http://gawker.com/397648/caustic-5wpr-employee-pimps-own-wedding-out-to-the-media
http://NYCRockStar.blogspot.com/
The pitch is terrible, but the idea isn't. They should have sold themselves to local media as 'too much in love, too poor to get married' and then had all the pro-marriage types backed into a corner, complete with shmaltzy blog, online donation mechanism and a few other tricks.
ReplyDelete(Admittedly, I wouldn't do it - or advise any of my friends to do it, but I can see their reasoning for doing it)
And how many people thought the million dollar homepage would be a success?
Sigh. Just painful. What I don't understand (and perhaps will never) is why they are opting for a wedding that could potentially run $10,00- $20,000 so they are "forced" to ask for sponsorship to avoid crippling debt? How about opting for something more subtle? But perhaps subtlety is not this pairs strongest trait.
ReplyDeleteI visited their site: The bowling coupon has expired.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think it would look great on a T-Shirt.
Someone needs to sit back for a moment. This is not, by any means, something you should have attacked with such lust for exhilment.
ReplyDeleteTo describe what you just did in one word would be hard, "Bullying", "Assishness", "Grouchy".
Every day millions of people have ideas, mostly bad ones. That doesn't make millions of people bad.
Grow up.
I would grow up for sure if you did not do the immature thing of posting Anonymously. Be a man or a woman. Not a mouse, dude.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Mr. or Ms. Anon
ReplyDeletewhat's exhilment?
Get a dictionary - and a life. Ha!
Richard
I think scribblercraig beat it to me, but the true sick thing is: I could get assloads of publicity for this. That's an indictment of many things: society, the low bar for media worthiness, my own morals, but...honestly, this is something that could appear on the landing page of Yahoo.
ReplyDeleteI have noted a lot of people said Bravo/a to them but the fact is: no one should, particularly in this era of "let's raise it up" be doing crap pitches on anything, even if they can get away with it. I mean, haven't we proven that a good PR person can succeed with anythinganything anything! The fact is, these people should not have done a worthless, undeserved "ask" to thousands of PR people around the country - or world for all I know. And if a local store chipped in, I guess that's the good news for the insipid among us, but as far as I'm concerned: it's still the worst pitch I have seen in a long long time. Deserving of the medal... PS: Will they have a sponsor for their DIVORCE?
ReplyDeleteHmm.
Hey - can't believe it but they actually got sponsors....http://scottandliz.org/ under wedding sponsors.....looks like mostly small businesses from their town.
ReplyDeleteThe bad pitch makes my head spin but the reason behind it saddens me. In my mind the bigger tragedy is that society has placed so much emphasis on the wedding day and so little on the actual marriage. Isn't a wedding day special and memorable because of the actual ceremony taking place or has pageantry taken center stage.
ReplyDeleteIt's pathetic that Scott and Liz bring nothing to the table yet expect a bunch of strangers to pay for their wedding.
ReplyDeleteI imagine that these are the people who should stick to voting for the next American Idol and buying tabloid weeklies for their entertainment instead of trying to be marketing geniuses.
These guys are amateurs, and therefore their "badness" should be overlooked. You should be concentrating on professional "badness".
ReplyDeleteI think you're right to rip into them. It's not just the "We are Worthy" thing, it's that when you ask someone to give up a bit of their time to listen to you (whether it's an email, a phone call or a song sung from a stage!), you should be respectful, humble even. It's not about You, it's about your Audience. Where's the humility in this pitch?
ReplyDeleteYou want a great wedding? Get creative with your own finances and family.
Shame on them for being such Want-Wants. Why wasn't it enough for them to be special to each other and their family and friends? This courting fame thing is so ikky.
As a jewelry designer specializing in bridal I can tell you that over the last 6 years I have received at least a dozen requests quite similar to this. All of which I ignored. After the first few I started to strongly suspect that some "wedding expert" somewhere at sometime mention that this would be a GREAT way to save on wedding expenses.
ReplyDeleteIck.
I was reading up something else on the internet which led me to this blog!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about this trend of "sponsor my Wedding" so my gut reaction to this idea is:
Courage: 8/10
Stupidity: 6/10
Sadness: 7/10
Innovation: 9/10 (scam or no scam!)
And yes, I do feel, like some others who commented, that you have been a little harsh on them!
ICK! go to the site now and you see a slimey pitch for a Christian home-based business using THE SECRET. The irony in the first sentence is enough to send one over the edge.
ReplyDelete