Did you know 2007 was the year of the attention economy? Saatchi & Saatchi seems to have decided that - its in their sig line. Our Italian colleagues have felt the magic touch of Saatchi’s attention - their Italian team reached out to marcomm writers to promote the launch of a client site. The release from Saatchi has drawn particular scorn from Gianluca and Italo because of its jargon-laden copy:

“…Il sito web, ItaliaIndependent.com, è on line dal 10 gennaio con una prima release di quella che si preannuncia una web experience magmatica, adrenalinica e fortemente interattiva. Figlio dell’era del crowdsourcing, in cui il consumatore diviene al tempo stesso target ed elemento cardine per la ideazione, progettazione e comunicazione del prodotto, italiaindependent.com è il primo passo di una self-building platform che saranno gli utenti stessi a generare, uploadando i propri contenuti.”

That copy is buzz-heavy, transparently self-serving, and the pitch was not well thought out. The site in question is completely coded in flash - and of consequence completely useless to bloggers who like to link to areas of particular interest. It seems the pitch was also accompanied by a .pdf file (linked at Gianluca’s post).

But the story gets better. Here in Canada, we’ve become used to buying up multiple URLs and top level domain names when working across languages. In the case of this site, it seems that an misspelt URL in a Reuters article let a small Italian marketing agency grab some attention (there’s that word again!) when it quickly snapped up the misspelt doman name.

Lessons learned from Saatchi’s pitch:

• Don’t try to sell milk to the milkman: throwing buzzwords and 2.0 concepts around will backfire if your work doesn’t back up the concept.
• Don’t misappropriate concepts: consumer as idea creator works - but not as well when you’re selling glasses at 1000 euros a crack. As one commenter points out on Gianluca’s blog, the average Italian metalworker makes 1000 euros a month.
• Personalize your pitch: once again, don’t mass mail your news release, especially when it provides very little detail.
• Follow-up with media, especially when they get your URL wrong.

[tags] Saatchi, italiaindependente, blogger outreach, blogger relations [/tags]