The phrase, "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is often used when a company is so attached to its own services and products that if fails to consider the needs of its customers or the media. I've worked with companies whose belief in their own offerings and philosophies made them blind to real life, and worse yet, wound up offending the many stakeholders upon whom their success and failure depends."Drinking the Kool-Aid" isn't the same thing as "team spirit." Passion for your organizational vision and mission is a wonderful thing. I'm talking about the C-Suite executive or business owner who forgets their company will there be to fulfill an unmet need that their audience actually wants.Think about the Ford Edsel story. The "Edsel" has gone down ever sold as a colossal marketing faux pas, or failure to gauge what their customers wanted. There are many reasons for its failure:The Edsel was created by an extremely large committee. Time magazine called it, "irrational groupthink." The Edsel designers were centered on designing a car for a segment whose needs had already been met. They called it, "Edsel," which didn't help either.They misinterpreted the study. The Ford company spent thousands of dollars on market research. What they didn't know then was that people have a tendency to lie on surveys, telling researchers what they think others, not themselves, want. Some argue that the survey data was viable, but Ford's interpretation of it had been incorrect.The automobile was, well, ugly, and had many mechanical flaws. The assembly lines had trouble putting it together. There were complaints concerning the tail lights. The worst feedback of all, however, was concerning the appearance of the front grille. One of the nicer insults was that it looked like "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon," and there have been other snarky anatomical references.Consider Ford's mistakes when planning your next story pitch to the media.1. Take your head out of the sand. The media and your market are hungry for interesting stories, educational content and how your unique expertise solves problems. Find methods to provide information, products and services that meet the needs of the media, not the fiscal need of one's business. Put simply, consider the interests of the media outlet you want to pitch rather than push a tale that meets your agenda alone.2. Target the media who are thinking about your industry. Among my editor friends vented the other day at lunch. She covers women's issues and wellness, but daily in her email inbox she gets pr announcements and pitches about animals, auto racing, food along with other unrelated topics. She said she used to forward the releases to the correct news desks, but lately, she's just deleting them. Before you send pr announcements or requests for coverage to any media outlet, execute a bit of research throughly first. Find out what they have to do their jobs. It'll be appreciated and yield good karma.3. Test your product or service thoroughly before rolling it out to the media. The press had a field day with the Edsel. It became the "fun thing to criticize." If there's any fault whatsoever together with your product, how it's delivered, or the quality of your customer service, there could be a storm of controversy in the form of customer complaints in social media or bad reviews from well-intentioned consumer advocacy reporters. Be sure your offering is really a well-oiled machine with plenty of support from your own friendly, well-trained employees.The Edsel was dubbed, "the incorrect car at the wrong time." So, stay away from the Kool-Aid and take care of your stakeholders first.