In my organization we do work with PR agencies. But clear guidelines are given to them about the campaigns and we used to monitor the responses from the affected clients.

This email needs a lot of improvements. Thanks for this post, I\’ll use this as an example in the upcoming discussions with our PR agencies.

I’ve always had success pitching media and bloggers by e-mail by first asking if they are interested in receiving a pitch on a specific product/topic in a brief e-mail.

If they are interested, they let you know. If not, they say no or ignore you (which also means no).

If I get mail I don’t want, I throw it away.

And to get up on someone for doing their job? You need to chill.

No matter what job someone has there always has to be someone to complain about what they’re doing.

I wonder what high respecting, non-soliciting, earth saving job you really have.

It’s getting to be a sad story that PR is not moving. And, well, it’s tiring.

“Seth,” are you for real? With all due respect, incompetence and arrogance are not generally a good mix of character attributes. Incompetence can be slightly endearing (sometimes) and arrogance can be deserved (occasionally) but when you combine the two, it isn’t a good outcome no matter what.

You need to get with the program, drink the Kool Aid, get on the bus, etc. — if not for your “personal growth” at least for your job security. Things have changed. In the New Media World Order, you will be deservedly flamed unless you acknowledge the power and influence of the blogosphere. You have been warned.

Two other thoughts to save you future frustrations: you might also want to tell this PR person what you want to be pitched in the future – if anything. If you don’t want to be pitched by any PR people, why not put a graphic saying that on a sidebar?

So I am trying to do something about it, put up or shut up right?

The Bad Pitch Blog is trying to educate and entertain folks. We out some of the offenders as you do here. We also try and point out the right way to conduct media relations.

The best response we’ve gotten so far has been from academia — professors and students. So we might have to wait a few years before we see a huge difference. All too often, the people we out are too far gone to figure it out. Sigh.

http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004352.html

Also, if you’re interested in other PR campaigns that went astray, as well as the perils of astroturfing, you can generally find a lot of info on astroturfing at the blog, Making Light. (Teresa takes apart astroturfers with glee. Just google “Making Light astroturf” for fun and hijinks.)

Here the Making Light crowd discuss the woefully misdirected campaign for Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008066.html

I appreciate your sentiment, but… yeah. My network is speaking for itself here. I have nothing to add that I haven’t already here and in my email to you. Welcome to the wild west.