Sunday, November 9, 2014 #comms20unawards: whats your worst comms of 2014?
So, here we are almost at the end of the year. And what a year it's been. Some good. Some bad. For this comms2point0 unaward category we'd like to look at the really bad comms of the year.
by Dan Slee
Worst comms of the year... that's quite a category to have a crack at.
While the comms2point0 unawards are about celebrating the best we've also held one of the slots back as a kind of therapy session.
It's WORST COMMS OF THE YEAR. Something so bad and so awful that it makes you just gnaw your leg off.
It could be something that you've seen in passing. It could be something you've been involved with:
- It could be something that you've been on the recieving end of. Maybe an at risk letter typed in comic sans? Just y'know to lighten the mood.
- It could be the finest stretch logo you've ever seen.
- It could be the best worst use of an apostrophe's and bad grammar that you've ever seen's.
- It could be something you've seen on television or YouTube.
- It could even be the shabbiest idea you managed to head off at the pass.
Whatever it is, you have two routes to do it. You can make a comment here or you can email us. You can add it anonymously. Or you can put your name to it. Either is fine.
To email, drop a note through to dan@comms2point0.co.uk or darren@comms2point0.co.uk.
Deadline is Wednesday November 12 at 11.59pm.
We are indebted to the marvellous people of Alive With Ideas for sponsoring this category. Who are very, very good at doing comms and have amazing taste.
Good luck!
Dan Slee is co-founder of comms2point0.
Reader Comments (8)
This is from Eddie Coates-Madden at the Sheffield City Council comms team,:“We have been working to promote Sheffield’s brilliant new indoor market, over some months. A market trader proposed we run a competition with a local autism college to design a mural for the side of one of the stalls. That seemed a reasonable idea.
“The proposal for the publicity of the winning entry rather surprised us though. The trader suggested that The Lord Mayor should do the big reveal of the mural whilst being flash mobbed by the Women’s’ Institute singing ‘Jerusalem’, and a local dance troupe would perform at the same time.
“There may have been talk of her (the Lord Mayor) riding in naked on horseback a la Lady Godiva but we’re not sure if that bit has been made up2!
Could we do comms in the style of theatre dance?
Honestly, no word of a lie.
A poster being put together for people with learning disabilities with paragraphs and paragraphs of text that was jargon filled and very patronising. Apparently the department had gone to specialists (not us) to produce it costing lots of money. We did our best to rectify but a rubbish job well done
The comms for Samaritans Radar was an exercise in "how NOT to" all the way through. Fingers-in-ears "lalalala" response to concerns, shill and troll accounts harassing the victims, deceptive and disingenuous statements. Then a total non-apology.
Two anonymous comments...
1. Our former Mayor all last year.
2. We got shunted off Breakfast telly to talk about dog poo by Nelson Mandela dying.
How about the marketing email from Threadless, one of the biggest online t-shirt companies, that had the Subject line: "Holy F*ck!"
I unsubscribed.
(I know this is an example of commercial comms, but it really was so bad!)
Also, it's 'gnaw', not 'knaw'.
*Looks at shoes*
Corrects copy.
Thanks, Jon ; )
The misuse of literally in the quote in the story at the URL above is up there for me.
Awful.
Burger looks nice though. ;)