2010-06-27 Ancestry contradicts Ancestry

vampire marketing

complete PR disaster

This week, the Ancestry.com PR people did seriously damage to the company they are supposed to promote with a press release that claims that Robert Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight film series, is related to Dracula.

Upon reading that shockingly shoddy press release, I quickly micro-blogged some sceptical remarks and questions. The Dracula Connection article contains detailed criticism that just doesn’t fit into a few tweets.

Those past few days, several other genealogists have joined me in publicly criticising and questioning Ancestry.com’s sensationalist press release. In remarkable contrast, although Ancestry claims that the ostensible connection was discovered by family history experts at Ancestry.com, not one respectable genealogist has come forward in support of Ancestry PR’s claim.

The Dracula Connection has been updated with links to several blog posts about Ancestry.com’s Dracula claim. This article started out as another updated to The Dracula Connection, but I soon decided to make it a separate article with screen shots.

Ancestry.com press release

Ancestry.com Dracula press release

This browser screenshot shows the Ancestry.com press release.
Many press releases contain ready-made quotes. Media can include these quotes to give the superficial impression that they spoke with the person themselves. This press release is no exception. It contains the following paragraph, which attributes a quote to Anastasia Tyler:

“Tracing Pattinson’s family back to Vlad was difficult research, but the pieces that unraveled created the perfect accompaniment to the Twilight Saga,” said Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist at Ancestry.com. “Without any myth or magic, we find royalty and vampires lurking in Pattinson’s life – making his story just as supernatural as the one he’s playing on screen.”

The Dracula Connection already made some choice remarks about the quote itself. The only remark about this quote that I’ll repeat here, is that the press release calls Anastasia Tyler a genealogist at Ancestry.com, while Ancestry.com’s own blog still lists her job title as PR & Events Manager at Ancestry.com.

That paragraph is not the only one that attributes a quote to Anastasia Tyler. Further down (not visible in the browser screenshot), the press release contains this paragraph:

“One draw of family history is exploring family mysteries,” said Tyler. “Whether family lore says you’re related to celebrities, the president – even vampires – all it takes is a little digging to find out.”

Ancestry.co.uk press release

Ancestry.co.uk Dracula press release

Ancestry.co.uk has its own press release pages. This browser screenshot shows the Ancestry.co.uk press release for Ancestry’s Dracula claim. The Ancestry.co.uk press release is a bit shorter. It leaves out remarks about NBC Who Do You Think You Are and earlier celebrity connections. It still includes the quotes, but even those parapraphs are slightly different:

Ancestry.co.uk International Content Director Dan Jones comments: “Without any myth or magic, we’ve found royalty and vampires lurking in Pattinson’s family history, making his story as supernatural as the one he’s playing on the silver screen.

“Family history is all about exploring family mysteries, whether you’re looking for celebrities or even vampires, all it takes is some digging."

Suddenly, the quote is not attributed to genealogist PR & Events Manager Anastasia Tyler, but to International Content Director Dan Jones. Those two Ancestry press releases contradict each other.

I first noticed the attribution of the same quote to someone else on the Telegraph website. I initially shrug it off it as some editing mistake, until I noticed it again, and found that the contradiction originates with Ancestry itself; the Ancestry.com and Ancestry.co.uk press releases contradict each other.

One Minion’s Opinion

I am not the first to write about this embarrassing disagreement. One Minion’s Opinion already had some fun with the observation, has some sharp remarks about the quote, and finally wonders how it happened. The Ancestry.com and Ancestry.co.uk press releases are different, that is how it happened.

It does not make Ancestry’s already ridiculous claim any more believable that their American and English press releases cannot even agree on who said what.

updates

2010-12-21 Ancestry.ca Lesley Anderson

According to the Ancestry.ca press release, it was neither Anastasia Tyler nor Dan Jones who made the remarks. It was Lesley Anderson, a genealogist at Ancestry.ca. According to the same Ancestry.ca web site, Lesley's actual job title is Content Acquisition Consultant.