YNOT – Are you sitting down? Are you SURE you’re sitting down … because what I am about to say will rock you to the very core of your being, and we here at YNOT cannot take responsible for any injuries that may result in losing consciousness over the tremendous impact of what you are about to read.

Are you ready? Are you SURE you’re ready? Deep breaths now … 1 … 2 … 3 … okay, it looks like you actually, possibly, could be ready to hear this universe-shattering, globally-important announcement.

Here it goes (take it easy … take it easy…): “PETA – The People For the Ethical Treatment Of Animals — says that they will soon be launching an adult-oriented website …”

Wait! Where did you all go? You can’t leave … don’t you understand that this could change everything, everywhere, forever!

Snark and clear hyperbole aside, this is important, but not because of what PETA recently announced. Putting aside the question of whether or not PETA’s cause is a good one, everyone – especially people in the adult industry – need to look at what PETA is doing, and has done, and why it could be argued that they are a complete and total failure.

Just look at what happened at the end of our drum roll lead in: your attention was there, sort-of, and then it wasn’t. Part of your tuning out was naturally because of the long – way too long – and copious – way too copious – drama. Any announcement, no matter if it’s important or not, that lays it on too thick will naturally get dismissed by most readers, especially readers whose job may be to pick press releases out and pass them along to potentially valuable media venues.

While writing press releases seems far too often to be a forgotten art – especially when you have to read then all day long – a few people have realized that some worthy research has gotten many business owners, and their marketing department, a clear idea of what to do and, even more importantly, what not to do. A good, basic, test of what a good press release should be is to pay attention to any that cross your path: if you actually read the whole thing, for example, that’s a good one – and any that you simply derisively snort at and throw out … aren’t.

The reason why PETA is part of this, though, is because of another common error many business owners make. Keeping PETAs mission out of the picture, they have pretty much become a media joke for their constant – and often irritating – stunts: telling college students to drink beer instead of milk, getting fading stars to pose naked, and now creating their own adult site; they have become so clearly desperate for attention that most people who come across them either scream SHUT UP or write them up as a laughingstock.

Beyond the adult site, what PETA can show an adult enterprise is the importance of sending out press releases, or creating media events, that actually have a purpose – and aren’t just making noise.

A good example of a noise announcement is anything that anyone, aside from the person sending it out, might read and go: who cares? Minor staffing changes, typical productions, transparent benefits or charity events, the list goes on and on. This is not to say that these types of releases don’t have their place, but when a company sends these kinds of things out all the time then it’s pretty much expected that media outlets and such will simply tune them out.

That’s worth repeating … and no, the irony isn’t lost on us: by sending out press release after press release, announcement after announcement, media shout after media shout – especially ones that don’t really say anything new or special – no one will pay attention. Think of it as the marketing version of the Boy Who Cried Wolf: if everything that comes out of your company is yelled at the top of your lungs then when you really do have something to talk about then no one will be around to listen.

And there is simply nothing worse – in this day and age of so much change in the business world, especially the adult business world – than having the world no longer listen to what you’re saying.