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This was fun for about 20 seconds, and then our arms got tired.
As much as the
SF Weekly tells PR people we don't write about things we don't buy, unsolicited samples and tchotchkes deluge the paper's offices ― more bottles of cheap wine than a Tenderloin corner store, enough T-shirts to clothe a Hungarian village.
Friday's haul set off a fierce debate. Waiting for two of us at our desks that morning were four-foot-long, four-pound mailing tubes, each containing a piece of wood with some paper nailed to it: A bourbon-barrel stave from a beer company advertising a new aged beer. What in the #$^@ do I do with a piece of charred wood? I began the day's rant with. Someone spent $15-$20 to mail me a piece of junk that is just going to go into the trash.
Then the marketing staff came over to inspect and proclaimed the stunt genius. "It got your attention!" they countered, pointing out that the stave has a presence, a heft, a smell that an e-mail wouldn't.
So which is it? Brilliant or a waste of money? And do you want these? Because they're still going in the trash.
