The old saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. As a former PR major, I agree with this to a point. Take our old friend Charlie Sheen for example. Surrounded by floods of negative publicity, Sheen has managed to turn himself into a social networking, internet parodied, MSNBC studied, attention monger. Sure, he’s probably made himself even more popular than he was when he was the highest paid TV actor, but at what cost? Last week the police went into his home and took away his twin sons.

The reason I bring this up is because of Rebecca Black. Her song “Friday” has now been dubbed the worst song of all time. What does that get her? Try 6 million views on YouTube and a trending topic on Twitter. All because Daniel Tosh made fun of her last Friday on his TV show.

Let’s bring this back into the email marketing and small business arena. Do you really want to become known for failing so badly with an email campaign that everyone is talking about you? Probably not. You don’t want to be known for making a horrible mistake or offending someone in an email. Sure it may get you attention, but is that the right kind of attention you want for your business? I say no. Don’t believe me? Go ask someone about BP and see what’s freshest in their mind about that company. Sure their mistake was much bigger than an email campaign, but you get the point. Be known for having great, well-designed and well-written email campaigns. People will talk about those too.