One day, we were checking our web stats and saw referrals coming from Horse and Hound’s website. When we visited this Horse an Hound page, we were surprised by the misinformation published by the “journalist” who falsely declared that our unicorn browband would “fall off” when a horse was running or jumping. We were also shocked to see that Horse and Hound published a photo from our website without first asking permission. Clearly, Horse and Hound magazine’s priority was to find a quick filler for their webpage without concern about supplying accurate facts to readers or potentially harming our small family business with their misinformation.
Yes, as the popular saying goes, “Any publicity is good publicity,” but to us, accurate publicity is more important. Granted, not all of it was bad. After all, it brought readers as well as a more notable journalist to our site. But we were shocked that a professional journalist could be so careless in the research, writing, and publication of an article – be it for online or offline publication.
Firstly, the photo they took from our website was under the copyright of the photographer and we cannot give permission to Horse and Hound to use that photo even if they had had the courtesy to ask.
Secondly, the author used the description of our Natural-Look Unicorn Horn™ (designed for taking portraits) and applied it to our Unicorn Browband™ which is made to stay on during athletic riding such as jumping and galloping. Horse and Hound took an advisory that one of our products was not intended for active riding and used it to misrepresent that our next best-selling product would fail in its intended purpose.
Yet, as is typical in the field of journalism, derision and sensationalism is more important than accurate reporting and the Horse and Hound journalist would have you think that if you bought one of our products, you would be disappointed. Our Natural-Look Unicorn Horn™ has been successfully used in costume classes, pony parties, and naturally, professional photography around the world for over 6 years. And our Unicorn Browband™ has been used in all types of riding from parades to show jumping for 10 years without “falling off” as Horse and Hound alleges.
Thirdly, the author failed to mention that the Unicorn Browband™ and Natural-Look Unicorn Horn ™ she wrote about are soft and child-safe – which is very important to us – and subsequently lead to uninformed comments to the article stating our product would impale a child.
This is not our first experience with the press and not the last. But we encourage our visitors and customers to always check the facts and read the actual product description of the products you are interested in, even if you already got “the facts” from a prominent publication.