Last Friday afternoon, I received an email from Macleans.ca which is home to Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine. In Macleans’ own words, they “enlighten, engage and entertain 2.8 million readers with strong investigative reporting and exclusive stories from leading journalists in the fields of international affairs, social issues, national politics, business and culture.”

But this past Friday, it appears they also offend readers. Yup, one email with a very edgy subject line resulted in a follow-up email with an oops apology. Here are the details…

The first email arrived at 1:46 pm and it had the subject line:
Macleans.ca | ‘Why don’t you go f*@! yourself’

Of course everyone knew it related to a quote from Brian Mulroney that had been pulled from the much talked about book titled “Memoirs”. What else could it have possibly meant?

Though risque, I actually found the subject line rather catchy. Made me open for sure. But knowing the typical Macleans.ca subscriber, I was very surprised to say the least.

So when the second email, aka the apology email, arrived at 5:37 pm, I wasn’t at all surprised. It had the subject line:
Macleans.ca | On second thought…

And it read:

“Our Apologies…

We regret that a quote from our leading newsletter article was placed into the subject line of this week’s Storyline. For any readers who were offended, we sincerely apologize.”

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I’m not sure anyone lost their job over this, but it’s quite a serious reminder to really understand your audience. Subject lines need to be clever and enticing, compelling and engaging, and all that stuff – but if you’re going to push the envelope, sender beware. What was Macleans.ca thinking when they hit send on this one. Perhaps there were barley sandwiches for lunch and this wit seemed appropriate. Who knows?!

I’m guessing the apology email went out right after someone on the email team got the axe. But maybe I’m wrong, the PR around such a negative might be creating quite a buzz for Macleans. Look at me, I’m posting about it and I linked to the e-newsletter too!

Just think back to the PR wow factor associated with the IKEA catalog and the inside photo of the dog? Look at the attention IKEA got from that! Not sure what I’m referring to, please click that link!!

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