The art of the throw-forward
Ping. An email today, one of a thousand. The subject matter is: Bank of England raises interest rates.
Yeh, last Thursday.
I think there are two overlapping things going on here. One is that corporate land doesn’t quite get how quickly the press moves — and then moves on.
Second is, even if it does get that, it has spent days carefully honing its message and it’s just going to put it out there. Because people have sweated blood over it, they’re sending it out anyway.
At the ES, our first take on the Bank’s 12pm move was up at about 12.10pm. It was tweaked to perfection (ahem) for about 12.30pm.
By 1pm, there was nothing for anyone to add to this story in terms of news, comment or analysis. At least, that’s the conceit, plainly we aren’t always going to succeed, but that’s sort of the goal.
After that, well, we want to throw it forward.
Here’s the pity: I clicked on that email mostly out of curiosity at the pointlessness of it. And it wasn’t actually that bad. There were some useful observations. And a bit of a throw-forward that was helpful-ish.
Later, an email on similar lines dropped.
It was titled: BoE: fast and furious.
That’s better, right?
The release does ask Why this might be so.
Amy Tomlinson at MetLife says: “If staff are calling in sick to avoid work this could point to a larger problem. Avoiding work could be a sign of stress, burnout or disengagement with their role.”
We're more than just a database
Sign up now and see how you can distribute winning campaigns every time.
