You can shake your elbow, but can you kiss it?

PastaQueen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:45:55 +0000

I get a lot of press releases. Email is cheap, so public relations companies blast out hundreds of copies of the same generic, boring messages to hundreds of people at a time. I think my email address got put on a mailing list that has been passed around to lots of companies, so now I get about six or seven emails a day trying to get me to write about products I know you guys have no interest in. I’ve gotten to a point where I read half the subject line and then trash the messages without reading them.

However, I occasionally get a press release with a subject line so ridiculous that I cannot help reading it and then guffaw at my desk, wondering if the person who wrote it is aware of how silly their message sounds. Case in point, a recent email I got for a hand sanitizer that says:

[Hand sanitizer brand name] predicts that the ‘elbow shake’ will soon supplant the traditional hand shake as the greeting of choice both in and out of the workplace.

OMG, can you seriously see yourself greeting people with an elbow shake? How long until an epidemic of funny bone injuries would ensue?

Also, I don’t see how this is a good campaign for a hand sanitizer. “Our sanitizer is so great that…you should never risk touching people ever again.” If the sanitizer is that good, I should have no fear of other people’s germs, right?

PastaQueen » press releases

You can shake your elbow, but can you kiss it?