What We Are #Thankful For – and NOT!

One thing for which social media is great is providing a platform for anyone to share with the world what they are thankful for at this time of year. We agree and have been doing that on Beyond the Hype for five years.

In 2011, we have many important reasons to give thanks:

Our loyal clients and long-time friends of the agency that have been the most important part of our success and the reason we could celebrate our 25 years in business this year.

Our hard-working team members, including our agency services team, who were so instrumental in a flawless move to downtown Boston.

Our tightly connected alumni community, which is always ready to rally together and use the social technologies available to help each other out in times of serious need.

Our friends in the journalist and blogger community who don’t paint all of us PR people with the same brush and who agree to take our calls and respond to our emails.

But, we decided to have fun with this year’s post and invite folks around the office to express what they are NOT thankful for – perhaps in the hopes that these will all go away. Here is what some said:

The never-ending “your call is very important to us” messages and wait times when you are trying to get quick information or support about a product or service that is getting a nice chunk of your money.

Packaging. I don’t know if they are trying to reduce thefts or, as Ellen Degeneres said in a great comedy bit, “ANGRY people do packaging,” but companies should test packaging before finalizing it. If it takes longer than five minutes and the mandatory use of sharp objects to open a package, it’s probably been overdone.

Misleading and controversial headlines on blog posts or articles tweeted out to the world that bear little relationship to the actual content in the post or article. I know everyone wants “views,” and “eyeballs,” but don’t resort to misrepresenting what you are delivering to those eyeballs just to get people to click on it.

Facebook’s notifications. Especially ones telling me I’ve missed a lot of popular posts. It is beginning to sound like a “you never write, you never call” nag from a parental unit.

I am not thankful for the winter season that follows Thanksgiving.

The New York Yankees and all their “beloved” fans. However, there is one thing I am THANKFUL for and that is not being brought up a Yankee fan. Of course, the Yankees historic collapse in 2004 is at the top of my THANKFUL list too. (Note: Of course, we mean no disrespect to our clients who are Yankees fans. You’re the good ones.)

The commercialism surrounding the holidays, especially now that it starts BEFORE Thanksgiving. The holidays should be about spending time with your family and friends, enjoying great food and drink, and of course FOOTBALL!

Twitter spammers

The poor judgment of a few that give PR professionals a bad name.

The "Pots calling kettles black" in Washington politics

The Red Sox

4:00pm Darkness

Christmas music already on the radio

My iPhone’s battery life

These Hyundai commercials coming back into rotation.

I’m not thankful for the lack proper metrics/analytics backends on some social media networks *cough*Twitter*cough*. Make my life easier puhlease!

I’m not thankful that I missed out on Thanksgiving for 17 years of my life while I was growing up in South America. It’s on my list of top it’s greatest holidays ever now.

In advance, I’m not thankful for my sleepiness, poor reflexes, and general lack of mobility on November 24th. But I’m also not sorry.