Luke Armour – Digital Marketing and Public Relations Observations, Commentary, Frivolity

Steve Rubel posts an interesting quiz for us on his website. Staples has apparently been charging customers for virus scanning on files that people come in to have printed. $2.49, Rubel reports, and it’s creating quite a stir in the blogosphere. Check out Steve’s post and we’ll create our own discussion here.

FOLLOW UP: Steve Rubel now contends that Staples is a blog winner. Recent developments indicate there was some confusion about what the fee was actually for, as Beth notes in the comment section of this post. Excellent work, Beth. Rubel notes that BoingBoing posted Staples’ response. My favorite part of this whole fiasco was what Jeremy Pepper wrote on Rubel’s follow up. This has been my complaint of the blogosphere since I started paying attention to it. And guess what? I fell into the exact same trap that I’ve been complaining about. I’m going to add “Lessons Learned” to the categories of this post…because it was a HUGE lesson for me. Pepper’s comment indicates the lack of professionalism in bloggers’ methods. Attacks are made with little fact or research and it is allowable. We’d never allow a traditional journalist to get away with this without being flayed. Somehow the electronic medium makes us forget to think or have consequences. I posted something similar in response to Tom Murphy’s Blog in his December 12th post titled Crossing the Tortoise.

I’ve learned something valuable here. I actually thought about calling my local Staples to verify this, but didn’t. The rumor mill sucked me in and I got ground up. Lesson learned.

Filed under: PR Lessons Learned, One to watch, PR Quizzes, Public Relations | 4 Comments »