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.

We corresponded through email, and I just wanted to make it clear here on your blog as well that the initial outreach email that I sent to you was intended for your Suicide Fan podcast, which is no longer up and running, and was not intended for your Technosailor blog. Regardless, I should have double checked to see if your podcast was still active, and for that I apologize. (As I did in the email I sent you.) We did pre-qualify and select your podcast from many others because our staff liked it. Being “outed” in such a manner is not something we are accustomed to, because we understand the importance of tailoring a pitch to a specific blog, podcast, website, etc. The original email was tailored to the topic of your sports related podcast, and showed how the player could be used to capture football highlight videos, which seemed like it would provide both you and your readers value as a tool.

To be clear, it is my intention and the intention of Guerilla PR to be honest and direct in our outreach to bloggers and webmasters alike, which we have done for 5+ years. We never intend to spam people. There is a long list of blogs and sites with which we have developed quality relationships, but every relationship has to start somewhere.

Cory O’Brien
Guerilla PR

Travis, I think that’s pretty much what we’re all thinking :)

It’s that “I wear a suit and regularly attend SEO/SEM seminars- I don’t need you nerds to tell me about the internets” mentality that any ‘new media’company selling websites (while their site is built with frames! Hello 1999!) and can say things like ‘Social Movement Creation’with a straight face.

What a timely post, as Wired’s Chris Anderson just whacked PR spammers with his Long Tail.

Thanks for the Topaz hat-tip (yes, disclosure time, I am a PR person from Topaz Partners). We hope people see we “get it” and live to stay away from pitches like the one you outed above.

But you know that from PodCamp Boston. Love the rants, keep ‘em coming!

There are no rules! (Actually, yes there are, but you haven’t bothered to learn them.) There are no qualifications! (Qualification in the blogosphere comes from trust and referral. It’s complicated. You probably aren’t going to get it based on that 45-minute workshop you did at the last Ragan conference.) There are no standards! (You’re on the breaking edge of a radically new form of communication. Things will change. Deal with it.)

I have some sympathy for folks whose jobs are changing overnight, but I wish more of them showed a little curiosity and initiative.

On your view of bloggers and our place in the world, all I can say is ‘don’t bet against the Internet’– if you do I hope you take lessons on how to swim in the deadpool.

So Aaron: if you’re “quite literally the cheapest form of fake reporter/columnist,” does that make Seth “quite literally the cheapest form of fake ‘letters to the Editor’writer”?

That’s not how it works guys. Get a clue. Or buy one.

Aaron, keep swinging that clue-stick dude, seems like you might be making progress :)

Beeeeep.

Do us all a favor, go back to doing whatever bloggers did before YouTube and LiveJournal gave anyone with a keyboard and limited understanding of the English language the idea to force their opinions on the rest of us. Working at McDonald’s, bagging groceries, living in your parents’basement.

On the plus side, I like being one of the only six people who have been to your site without you sending them an email to see how smart you are. Its like a club, except this one sucks.

Good response Aaron. Maybe the guy would learn something from it! Maybe he should read the 21 Tips to pitch a Blogger by Darren sometime! lol

Cheers!

Just way too much of a hard sell. In general, blogger relations work better when you are already active in the community. Thus relationships are established. A pitch letter is not necessary, but But it seems like RealPlayer did a great job responding to your post. Hopefully they’ll amend their blogger relations program.

GL

P.S. Thanks for the hat tip.

Thanks for the email heads up on this that you sent. As painful as it is to read, you are right to flag it as a good example of bad PR. Guerilla is a marketing firm hired by our RealPlayer product team which is understandably eager to get the word out. I have already talked to the product folks to make sure they know the right way to do this versus a sure-fire way to elicit angry email from a blogger such as yourself.

But, I don’t follow you on points 3 and 4. If he had written to you using your name and your current blog would these have pissed you off? I thought the e-mail (besides the piss poor attempt at personalization) was actually honest and direct and not pushing at all.

“WE USE THE INTERNET. We listen. We learn. We engage. We involve. We speak the language of thousands of unique communities. We motivate people to buy.”

I’ll clear this up, let me go over to the company blog and make a comment. Oh wait…