I have a folder that sits on my desk. You don't want to be in it. It's simply labeled blunders. It is a collection of some of the worst marketing, advertising and public relations examples I have ever seen.

When I was 14 years old I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, I just didn't realize people called it marketing communications. It was during that year that I started to collect some of my favorite examples and I saved them. In fact, I hung most of them on my wall. I didn't have much content to sort through so I would steal magazines that belonged to my brother, sisters, father and mother. I would sift through them and when something caught my eye, I kept it. To this day I have a bad habit of ripping out pages from doctor office magazine collections. Just ask my wife. It's her pet peeve.

The materials I tend to collect are either very very bad or extremely well executed. I have separate folders for each. After all, what is the point of collecting mediocre examples? The content itself ranges from great use of content flow in make-up and jewelry ads to a really bad advertisement about a lawn mower. There are also reminders of great public relations campaigns like the recent Chesepeake Energy's Barnet Shale to the bad handling of a PR crisis over at the Boston Arch diocese. You can find postcards, fliers, bad business cards and the list goes on and on. After sharing some of these materials with a group on real estate agents one day someone asked me "Don't you ever feel bad about showing people's bad advertising." My reply was simple and honest. They didn't feel bad about making it, I'm just helping them promote the message they created.



The part that most companies miss when they realize that they have not promoted themselves in the most effective way is that they are missing a connection to their audience. Worse yet, those who do take a look at a company with poorly executed advertising, public relations and marketing will often see the brand in a negative light.

The same is true with real estate agents. If you want to advertise yourself in a cheap way, expect a cheap audience. If you want to make yourself look like a snake oil salesperson, then come up with very cheesy slogans and use bad photos of yourself to promote your brand. If you want to blend into the crowd of real estate clutter then use the same text, tag lines and photos that everyone else is using. You will all but guarantee that no one will look at your branding.

On so many levels this is a very easy game. There is a reason why everyone knows what a salmon fish is. It's because they swim upstream. So the question remains. Isn't it about time you swim upstream?