Buzzplant: none more crass

Lately I've been getting a steady stream of unsolicited bad marketing and PR mail. People promoting products are stooping to new lows in order to try and get legitimate weblogs to promote their clients for them. It's fake viral buzz hidden behind whatever legitimacy a participating website can offer. I've seen the quality and cluefullness of these PR pitches go way down, but tonight, one PR agency's pitch trumps them all.

I give you the flight 93 PR blast.

Now if you haven't heard, there's a movie about the hijacked plane on 9/11 that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside, enroute to the Capitol. Personally, I have a hard time reliving that day and I can't even watch the trailer. I don't know how anyone can watch a film like that or how anyone can have any respect for a movie studio trying to make a buck off this nation's tragedy five years ago.

So their PR agency is giving away free tickets if you plaster banner ads on your blog to promote a movie reliving our terror so Universal Studios can make more money from ticket sales. What kills me is the line about:

Due to the nature of the subject matter of the film, we request that the giveaways be done in a very respectful, thoughtful manner.

...sort of like how this unsolicited PR pitch was sent to me oh so respectfully (I can even unsubscribe from future pitches! thanks!).

Bloggers will also love their idea to exploit your readers into writing some of that highly prized User Generated Content about that emotional day:

One idea is to ask visitors to your site to share their own memories of 9/11

...again, so a movie studio can make more money from this exploitation flick.

I hope the folks at buzzplanet do a great job getting more tickets sold for flight 93 and I can't wait to see flight 93 banners all over the blogosphere. I hope it makes Universal Studios a lot of money in the process, because there is no better way to come to terms with terror than to go watch a movie about it.