“We specialize in bland identity, bland development, bland strategy, bland building, bland positioning, digital blanding, fully integrated blanding campaigns, bland UI/UX design, and bland environments.”

Hats off to a Baltimore team who designed a hilarious parody agency website called Bland.ly. It had us in stitches (and is surprisingly convincing). We loved the team description of ‘content massager’, (which is) surely an improvement on ‘truth massager’, an accusation more often levelled at PRs. I personally aspire to be a social media ninja, and I’m pleased to know that in the UK at least the PRCA is stamping out the ‘Unpaid intern’.

A PR agency’s website acts as its biggest marketing platform. Written by its own professional wordsmiths (surely?), it should deliver an intended message using carefully crafted and polished words and phrases to grip the reader’s attention and inspire them to want to know more.  It shouldn’t be a string of buzzwords to ride the latest SEO wave, whilst lashed with indecipherable jargon and acronyms.

Self-deprecation aside, it is healthy to have a good laugh at your own expense. So fellow agency people take note, then take stock, and then consider redesigning your website. As we at Firefly are certainly doing in light of the bland.ly jolt of reality.