| Hey Captain Jack, Aim Those Cannons Somewhere Else |
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By: Mike Bush |
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 Johnny Depp is kind of famous. He’s played a boatload of roles in his life, including Edwards Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Willy Wonka, George Jung, and of course Captain Jack Sparrow.
Jerry Bruckheimer is sort of a big deal, too. His production company boasts credits for movies like Armageddon, Coyote Ugly, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Pirates of the Caribbean, and National Treasure, among many, many more.
Together, there’s an awful lot of Hollywood street cred, and enough reputational cache that when they combine their efforts, you should expect big things.
However, their latest collaboration, the Lone Ranger, seems to have missed the mark and appears set to lose a TON of money.
Naturally, when this type of thing happens, the people behind the movie take a second, reflect on what has gone wrong, rolls up their sleeves, get back to work, and...wait, that’s not what they’re doing at all.
They’re blaming critics for being too harsh.
As flacks, there may be times where we’ve believed a reporter got something wrong. Maybe we’ve asked for (and possibly received) a correction if something was factually inaccurate, depending on the reporter, editor, and validity of our request.
However, when folks who are paid to write their opinion say “I don’t like it,” maybe they shouldn’t be faulted. When dozens of folks who are paid to write their opinion all say they don’t like something, maybe it’s time to consider that perhaps the item in question isn’t very good.
In tech PR, I’d guess that some of our clients have received a not-so-flattering review. Hopefully we took that as an opportunity to help our clients understand what the market is looking for. And hopefully, once things improved, we secured a second, more positive review.
Or…we could publicly call the reporter who wrote the review a weenie.
I’d guess that the former will get better results in the long term. But on the bright side, we’ve got two people with incredible star power testing out the latter for us.
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Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.
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