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Hoist With My Own Petard?
April 4, 2008

On Tuesday, I had a post about how you can use April Fool's Day pranks and jokes to help with your company's marketing. One caveat, however, is that you might want to hold off making real news announcements on April 1. I say this from experience:

I have been a senior analyst and writer for The Industry Measure, a market reserach company serving the graphic communications industry. One of our most popular (i.e., free) services is a weekly "Fast Fact" e-mail that wenty tout to thousands of subscribers. On March 31, The Industry Measure was shut down by its parent company, and for that week's Fast Fact I wrote a "farewell" that read like this:

Be Seeing You!

The Facts
Since 1995, The Industry Measure has published 429 Fast Facts, approximately 200 special reports and a combined total of 80 market survey reports.

Why Should You Care?
This will be the last Fast Fact you receive from The Industry Measure. While the future of The Industry Measure itself remains ambiguous as of this writing, its chief writers and analysts—Richard Romano and Heidi Tolliver-Nigro—continue to be active in the industry, and are embarking on a variety of exciting new projects and initiatives. To keep up to date on new research, reports, newsletters (print and e-mail), and other publications from your erstwhile Industry Measurers, please send a note to Dpapin@aol.com. A new blog can be found at http://mediatrends.typepad.com.

I have been writing for The Industry Measure (and its previous incarnation TrendWatch Graphic Arts) since 2000, and it has been an exciting time to be conducting research on trends and changes in the graphic arts industry. I look forward to continuing to see the industry through even more profound transformations in the years to come. Stay tuned.

--Richard Romano, Senior Analyst, The Industry Measure

The only problem was that our Fast Facts routinely go out on Tuesdays--and tthis one went out April 1. Sme of the responses we received indicated that the recipients thought it was an April Fool's prank! Doh!

The lesson to be learned is to be conscious of the calendar when making news announcements.

Posted by Richard Romano on April 4, 2008 | Comments (0)