Spinpox*

This positing is inspired by the PR antics of a firm that has a product which I quite like. Although, I would add that the product is almost totally pointless and I probably – well, definitely - wouldn’t pay for it.

The firm has been around a fair while now, making slow gains here and there, punting the aforementioned product and it has yet to make any real dent into consumer consciousness.

Not much has changed in terms of functionality since launch. The product, which is a mobile phone service, remains fairly quirky and of niche interest. The firm would love for one or all of the major carriers to realise what they’ve been missing out on and promote this product to their subscriber base.

This scenario is a trifle unlikely since the service competes with a service the carriers already provide. Besides which, if the carriers liked the idea they would have nicked it by now and done it themselves. Indeed, I’ve noticed that a number of rival consumer offerings have popped up during the last year. None of these will be particularly successful either.

Still, that’s not Bad PR, it’s just bad business.

The Bad PR element that bugs me is the firm’s insistence upon carrying out research that, guess what? Well, yep, it claims, finds, bears out, corroborates, affirms, announces, authenticates, validates, substantiates and confirms that consumers really, really, really like the product and that it’s dead useful and popular, honest.

The firm is not alone in this deadly PR disease that I’ve dubbed spinpox*. In fact, let’s face it, pretty much any piece of ‘research’ is funded by a firm that has a vested interest in the results of the research backing up their business.

I could go out onto Oxford Street today with a carefully phrased set of questions that ‘prove’ that the majority of UK consumers would be interested in cycling to Iraq for their summer holidays.

You can ‘prove’ just about anything with funded research.

*Any resemblance to an actual organisation’s name is purely coincidental.