Timing

Certainly, the e-coli spinach crisis is not a lot of laughs - especially for the victims. (Nor is the likely underlying story about the dangers of agri-business going to be either.) Marketers of healthy/healthful foods will have their challenges recovering from this (although of course there will be plenty of opportunities here as well).

But I did have to feel a bit bad for the Embassy Suites Hotels' agency when I saw their ad in this week's New Yorker. The headline reads "Everyone Likes Spinach in Their Omelettes, Except People Who Don't." (The ad promo'd their complimentary, cooked-to-order breakfast, and while I thought the design was terrible, the message was fine.) I'm sure the ad was in the can weeks ago, and now they're stuck with their placements. I'm sure they were thinking: spinach, hey, that won't offend anyone, plus a lot of people hate it, or used to hate it, so it's even a little funny, heh, heh...

When I was at Genuity, the marcomm folks designed a disaster recovery campaign around an "anything can happen" scenario that included a very clever cartoon of a plane flying into the Empire State Building. Not so clever after all, given that the campaign was scheduled for September 2001. Timing may not be everything in life, but it sure is something.