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7/17/17, 12:50 PM   #20
Re: what hurts sprintcar racing
darnall
darnall is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Speedwrench View Post
While we're on the subject of hyped-up false enthusiasm on the part of some talking head/PR types, I have to scratch my head whenever I read a press release about some guy who ran seventh in his heat, sixth in the B, and somehow still made the show and ran eleventh in the feature and his publicist makes it sound like the guy won Knoxville and Eldora on the same night. And press releases for this guy read basically the same week after week.

I understand the PR person is being paid to make the client look good and wants to keep the checks coming, but I don't see how some of these people can keep generating so much false enthusiasm endlessly.

Somewhere this probably ties into the false enthusiasm put out by the race callers mentioned above.

Edit - this is aimed more at press releases for individual drivers rather than sanctioning body or track PR flak.
Man I am right there with you. It is absolutely insane how many PR posts one has to wade through on any message board or social media site these days...especially when 75% of them are stories about 15th place finishes. I get that more exposure helps gain and maintain sponsorship and fan following but once it becomes this watered down is it really doing anybody any good anymore?

And the way it has trickled down is even more mind boggling. Apparently now every 9 year old that races a gokart must have a full time PR team. I literally saw a press release for a 10 year old kid racing rookie restricted wing karts on a purely local level that read as follows... "After running 3rd in his heat race the inversion put Mason on the front row for the A main. Mason was able to jump to the lead on the start and maintained the lead until lap 3 when his engine blew. Despite the ill timed equipment failure, Mason recorded yet another top 5 finish."

People that were there saw 4 karts take the green and the leader grenade a motor and park 3 laps into a 15 lap main and subsequently get scored for last place, which happened to be 4th.

People that actually read the "story" but weren't there could have come away thinking "Man that kids talented, even with a blown engine he still finished in the top 5."

Again I wonder...when your press release is competing for readership with press releases about Mason and his hard fought top 5 how much good are you getting out of writing up your 12th place finish in an 18 car field?
 
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