Kicking the dead dog… new "meme"

Tom Murphy

Many strange phrases have entered into the Interweb consciousness, think of “jump the shark”, “the long tail”, “markets are conversations”, so I have a new one: “Kicking the dead dog”**.

“Kicking the dead dog” describes the preponderance of people online to continually talk about the same thing over and over and over again. Given this is my phrase I’m giving it two meanings. It also describes the continual wave of posts that declare something is now “dead”.

In the world of PR there are two topics that have people kicking the dead dog. The death of PR and the death of the press release. I struggle to generate the energy to read these posts and whenever I do I need strong coffee and painkillers.

The latest person kicking the dead dog is declaring that the press release is… sorry I’m too bored to go into any more detail, I’ve added some links below, the first link is the offending post, the subsequent posts I’m glad to say have some common sense.

Let’s just post a single phrase from the original post:
“I have a disruptive role to play in mainstream PR”

Okey dokey… I … errr have a … emm.. narky, angry role to play in dealing with silly blog posts.

Follow the first link at your peril, read it, then forget it. The press release is alive and well folks, in fact it’s “walking the live dog” so to speak. I’m swimming in press releases, you can have them anyway you want them, in e-mail, on a website, in RSS, by fax, by post, by courier, I’ll even read it to you. But it ain’t dead…

**Long-time readers (hello mum) will remember that I’ve tried in vain to create a massive Internet groundswell around new terms in the past. I think I’m missing the money element. Most of the others promise loads of cash. Mine doesn’t. That explains it then.