Slapping You Back Into Reality

Life has a way of slapping you back into reality.

Less than 24 hours ago I cursed Mother Nature for the second snowstorm in a month she dumped on the NYC area. I sneeringly mocked consumers who flooded supermarkets as if they were preparing for a nuclear fallout. I bitched and moaned about how my waist size would continue to expand as my daily jogging regiment was indefinitely postponed yet again by the weather. I even ranted and raved about the inevitable lack of parking spaces available because of the mountains of snow piled along the street curbs. All these complaints dominated my thoughts . . . that is until this morning when I scanned the news wires.

Early Saturday morning Chile was rocked by an incredible 8.8 earthquake. The quake, which according to the AP was one of the strongest ever recorded, was responsible for “toppling homes, collapsing bridges and plunging trucks into the fractured earth.” At least 147 people are dead and the quake’s one-minute long shake could be felt 1,800 miles away in Sao Paulo, Brazil. As I write this 1/3 of the globe is under a tsunami watch, including Hawaii and even California. 53 nations and territories are facing tsunami warnings (We have all seen enough video footage to know the devastation a tsunami is capable of inflicting)

And here I am complaining about some snow.

Don't I feel like a fool.

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Need a PR Specialist? Perhaps my 13 years of PR experience can satisfy those needs. I have publicized world champions such as Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield, and mega-events like Lewis-Tyson and De la Hoya-Vargas. Contact Donald Tremblay (The Rain Maker) at 718-664-3405 or at dtremblay@earthlink.net. For more info about me visit my LinkedIn Profile.

Shock Still Sells

For nearly 12 years I served as Public Relations Director for the professional boxing promoter Main Events. The company promoted some of the biggest pay-per-view events of the past two decades, such as Holyfield- Foreman, Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson, and Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield. It also promoted “Howard Stern's New Year's Rotten Eve 1994” ppv event. One afternoon while seated around the conference room table, my co-workers and I each predicted what we thought would be the highest-selling PPV event in history. Unanimously we agreed that it would be a live execution: a hanging, the electric chair, a firing squad, etc . . . Morbid? Yes. But considering the public’s hunger for the outrageous, it is also probably accurate.

Whether it is a shock jock spewing edgy comments or a television program testing the nudity boundaries of network television, marketers know that people want to be stunned. The more mechanical and rote our lives become, the stronger the need for a jolt to awaken us from our daily slumber. The trouble with shock is that eventually we become desensitized, resulting in the need for even more extreme measures to grab our attentions.

This week’s episode of the teen drama “Gossip Girl” featured a sexual threesome. Although many parents were upset by this prurient gimmick for increased viewership, if history is any indication the episode will probably score high ratings. As the NY Daily News pointed in a recent article, “When advertisers boycotted the launch of 'NYPD Blue,' while initially financially problematic, it helped boost early audiences and made that show a long-running hit.”

And therein lies the problem. We consumers lament the “crap” we are served by the TV and movie industries; yet we continue to gobble it up in ever greater amounts (see reality TV).

So who is to blame but ourselves?

Swine Flu Fiasco

The U.S. Government is desperately trying to pass universal healthcare legislation. Nearly all Americans believe healthcare costs are outrageous and that something needs to be done. So one would think that the federal government would capitalize on this disaffection by using its swine-flu vaccine distribution program as a showcase to prove it can facilitate healthcare services.

Well, if that was their intention then they failed miserably from a public relations standpoint.

On Friday the Associated Press reported that “some of New York's biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged.” (Wall Street Gets First Crack at Vaccine!- Click Here) Despite President Obama’s declaration that the swine-flu is a national emergency, reports abound of widespread vaccine shortages for those deemed by the CDC to be at greatest risk, children and young adults up to age 24. How’s that for a PR mess? White collar workers from hated multi-national corporations receive the vaccine, but your average inner city or middle-America citizen is left high-and- dry. Regardless of the accuracy of this class warfare view, this is the perception of many people. At a family party I attended yesterday the general response to the U.S. Government and its role in the Wall Street/swine-flu vaccine debacle was, “And these are the people who want to run our healthcare system?”

Sadly, yes.