View all news articles >>

South China Morning Post - October 3, 2000
Copyright (c) 2000. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Are you fed up with faxes from flack catchers? Put out by pushy public-relations agencies? Backspace recommends you try www.whackaflack.com

The creators clearly understand the hardships of digging through the thousands of virtually identical, jargon-packed pages of fluff sent each day by PR firms.

Whack A Flack is a Shockwave game in which you fire press releases, folded into paper darts, at PR execs as they pop their heads over cubicle walls.

According to trade magazine InfoWorld, the site built up profiles on 5,000 journalists in a week, and has grown by 50 per cent a day since August.

But there is more to this site than pointless revenge. Built by a US marketing firm, Whack A Flack is a piece of cunning and devious market research. Before you can play the game, you are asked which PR firm you would like to take a pop at, and why. And you are also asked for your e-mail address. Wonder why.