Ranting About PR
This morning as I was deleting the garbage reading the slew of news releases I get each day, a couple of thoughts occurred to me.
First I know that because we attend industry conferences as press, and because of the topics we write about, we wind up on press distribution lists that don’t apply. So we get email announcements about topics we’ve never written about or expressed any interest in. That’s expected up to a point, but it amazes me that some PR firms never cull their lists to eliminate people who aren’t interested. There are a couple of PR firms who send me their news even though I’ve never written or mentioned anything they’ve sent and never responded in email. The only contact ever has been their spam news in my inbox. I have some of these folks who I’ve been receiving junk from for years now, and most of them are auto-filtered to my junk mail.
There’s one firm in particular, who I won’t mention by name (ok, maybe later I’ll blast them in public for stupidity, but not this morning) who makes me laugh. They’re in the broad industry of what we’d call unified communications. It’s a topic I write about daily. I have actually written about the company one time, but in a most unflattering way. I pretty much called them me too copycats without vision or business plan. I may have said in that post they were a company I wouldn’t bother writing about again.
Since that time, I get one or more news releases every week from their PR firm that’s worded as if we’re the best of friends. They always close with “may I call you to discuss in more detail?”
Let me clarify something. If I never wrote about your company, or wrote something that was negative, then never acknowledged your existence again, I probably don’t want to hear what you’re doing. It’s unlikely I will ever write about you unless someone I really respect says something nice first. And we’re not friends. I don’t want to talk to you on the phone about the pure crap snake oil smoke and mirrors innovative technology you’re foisting on unsuspecting victims delivering to the market.
How a PR firm approaches a blogger and industry analyst matters. And in many cases what begins as a negative view can be turned around simply by how you handle contacting us. But if you demonstrate cluetardedness by continually spamming, you do a great disservice to your clients. it’s important to remember as a client of PR firms in general that the firms representing you is just as much your company image as your CEO. And they can leave you in a bad light if they do their job poorly.
Don’t let your PR firm tarnish your image.