Bad or irrelevant PR pitches are nothing new.
Many of us, in our more quiet moments, will admit to probably not investing the time and effort we should have from time to time (a long time ago obviously 🙂 ).
The key thing is to remember your mistake and learn from it.
We’re seeing more journalists and bloggers publishing lists of PR firms they are blacklisting. [Ref: Chris Anderson last October]
Now a guy called Matt Haughey is doing something similar as has Gina Trapani.
See here and the PR Spammers Wiki for more details.
(For the more evil minded among you, although it’s a Wiki, you won’t be able to edit it without the right log-in. You could always ask, but I get the feeling you won’t get a favourable hearing 🙂 )
Todd Defren, whose firm is on the list, has posted an “open post” (I am assuming that’s the correct blog equivalent…) to Gina.
I like it. It’s conversational.
Brian Solis, whose firm is also on the list takes a different tack. (I have to admit I came away thinking about meat more than anything else and I’m not sure that was the objective!)
I hope that before any “holier than thou” PR person starts to crow, they stop and realize that we all live in greenhouses on this matter.
We should strive for best practice, reinforce the right and wrong way to communicate (online and offline) and reflect that sometimes mistakes happen, and sometimes people are more or less forgiving.
That’s not to say that I am adopting a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance on this matter. To be honest, even this little blog receives a lot of “PR” pitches that don’t make the mark.
If you’re going to engage online, then for the love of jebus do some research. That’s what Internet browsers and search engines are for…
On a related note, Alice Marshall offers some advice on the importance of being proactive before an issue arises rather than hiring shady companies to try and out rank negative blog posts.
Hear hear…
Murphy's Law 