The Messaging Times

The best way to succeed is to fail faster. The faster you make mistakes, the faster you will learn to avoid them – even improve from them.

There are many new words (or contextual uses of existing words) in our language today, whether coined or not, that are used regularly in online communication. Fail is one of them. Fail is used to describe an image, sign or attempt at something (usually captured in video) that shows a failure in communication or effort. They are often very funny and generally teach us quickly how not to do something. To make it clear, the word FAIL is usually superimposed on the image or video shown. I suppose you could consider it a stamp of [dis]approval.

One of the best sources for Fail examples is failblog.org, which allows users to submit evidence of failures and has compiled thousands of great examples of bad communication and misadventures.

Marketers can learn quite a bit from failing, and Dylan Boyd has compiled his own list of Fail examples related to email marketing in his post Email campaigns that failed. They may not be as funny as those on failblog.org, but they will help you to succeed faster if you take heed.

Fortunately, we can learn from the failures of others too.