I happened to be writing a piece about green technology when a PR got in touch. Her client, it seems, had a new solar panel powered piece of kit that it wanted to promote. “That’s perfect,” I said, so far, so Good PR, “send in some blurb and if you’ve got a picture, all the better”.
The blurb was sent in, it was standard fare and would make a nice little news in brief for the product round-up section. There was no photo. Not to worry, it wasn’t a deal breaker.
In the run up to deadline the PR emailed me to let me know that there would be a photo of the product, “thanks for letting me know,” I said, “I’ll make sure we leave space.”
The day before deadline there was still no photo. I emailed the PR: “Any news on the photo?” I asked. “Yes, they’re working on it.” I was told.
The following day I received an email from the PR with an attachment that purported to show a villager erecting the product. The PR noted that she wasn’t entirely sure what the person with the bucket to the right of the pic was doing.
I opened the jpeg and saw what on first glance appeared to be exactly what she had described. However, on second glance I noticed that he picture was obviously an implausible Photoshop mash up. The piece of kit added looked like something from Pete’s Dragon, the ‘villager’ supposedly erecting the kit was actually someone filling up a container by a hand pump, while the mysterious bucket to the right was clearly someone else waiting to use the hand pump.
I told the PR that I had some reservations about the validity of the image. She said: “Serves me right for not looking at that photo close enough. I was just so relieved to have got it. I’m going back to see why they photoshopped it. And ask while they were at it why they didn’t get rid of the bucket!”
Amateurish is not the word.
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