I almost do not want to comment on it, but recently in the news there have been a variety of really bad marketing ideas, the most recent the bomb scare in Boston. Call them Guerrilla Marketing, Buzz Marketing or PR. It is just a bad idea to go for broke on one idea that has the potential to cause big problems.

I think back to the woman that died a few weeks ago from water poisoning in a radio contest and it adds to my feeling of disappointment in marketing and PR. Where is the common sense? Why aren’t these people asking, “What is the worst thing that can happen?” If the answer includes death, city-wide panic, clients name gets national negative buzz…. think up something else.

And before we blame the agency for everything, clients do need to have a sense of what their tolerance for risk is and to avoid those ideas that could lead to bad buzz or worse.

Today everyone is a marketer. We all create word of mouth and buzz, even if we do not want to. Whether you are hiring a top marketing agency or a basement blogger that is writing in your industry, you need to make sure they have the good sense to not put your organization at risk.

A more mundane example

I was recently talking to someone that told me the story of a company with a popular product. A product would be easy to create buzz about. The president of the company hired an agency that convinced him to get stickers made up and plastered all over the city. He had his doubts but they told him they were the experts. He considered it the biggest business mistake he ever made after the campaign was over.

Why? It was vandalism. If I gave out stickers and people I did not pay chose to do that, it might be cool and viral. Paying people to run around and stick things all over is just going to piss people off.

No mass panic or deaths that I heard of, but a good small company blew a big part of their marketing budget on something that fell flat and actually made people angry.

The simple truth is that you may get lots of free and easy buzz if you have a fantastic product that everyone talks about. Otherwise, you are going to have to work hard to make yourself stand out and commit to creating some buzz every day, as well as actively recruit advocates and build great relationships with them. Avoid the gimmicks, especially if there is a big down side.