Mobile games are a marketplace of one-hit successes followed by little to nothing. How do you do PR for a company or the industry at large? PR and publicity resting on a one-hit wonder is a foundation of sand on the edge of an ocean. Once the public tires of the game, there isn’t a bulwark left to protect the company, and it subsides into mediocrity or goes out of business. Strategically, a company should fear too much success with a game because that means it needs to strip the rest of the business of talent to support the hit. When the public moves away, there is little time to reassign engineers and developers to other products. Hence, layoffs and shrinkage. The computer games industry in general has had hard times surviving and it doesn’t look as if this will change much in years to come. The public is fickle and when it comes to games, it is especially uncommitted to any company or title.
Inadvertent Bumble
The Boston Herald ran a cartoon of Obama brushing his teeth and an intruder washing in the bathtub. The image was a jab at the Secret Service for letting an intruder into the White House. The words in the balloon, however, inadvertently exposed the Herald to politically correct criticism. The intruder asks if Obama is using the new watermelon-flavored toothpaste. The editor said she didn’t catch the reference to watermelon and the cartoonist himself said he was referring to a flavored toothpaste he had heard about. Neither took blame for making a racist remark. What this exposes is the need for multiple eyes on copy to look for words that can offend. Newspapers particularly should be careful but every copywriter of public material needs a sensitivity to words so they don’t offend. Political correctness can go too far, and there is a time when one can say enough and move ahead. However, in a situation like this, it would have made little difference if the toothpaste tasted like cucumber. I’m sure the cartoonist is mortified, as is the editor. Inadvertent bumbles happen. One can only pick up and move on.
Show Trial
Congressional hearings are naught but show trials. For example, this one. Everyone can understand the mistakes the Secret Service made in allowing an intruder to the White House. So, Congressional leaders dusted off their best insults and quotable lines and flung them at the director of the agency all the while hoping they would get TV camera time. The Secret Service director didn’t handle it well. She said among other things that it will never happen again. Little does she know whether it will or won’t. There is always a chance that an event like this could happen again — and probably will. The question is whether the Secret Service will be on its toes or caught napping. The Service has taken a number of reputational blows in recent months. It needs better PR, but that, of course, starts with apprehending intruders at the White House.