Comments on: Dear PR agents,

By: What’s PR to do? « Theory N’ Practice

What’s PR to do? « Theory N’ Practice — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:48:08 +0000

[...] I was just about to write part II to the All Access Media post when I came across an interesting reflection of the state of PR practice today. John’s insightful rant is against PR professionals exploiting Bloggers to get cheap PR [...]

By: Norby

Norby — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:08:02 +0000

I wonder if this has anything to do with their recent acquisition by Microsoft? They can turn anything bad just by touching it …

-/\/

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:37:57 +0000

John,

Found your site from a friend’s site (http://standardcatastrophes.wordpress.com), and I just wanted to say I enjoyed your write-ups, especially this one. I’m actually in PR (well, kind of, I’m getting a Ph.D. in Communication with a PR major), and I hear ya…it’s too bad we can’t teach our PR graduates that PR isn’t about free publicity, but about making a product or service that speaks for itself. Alas, since I teach PR classes to undergrads, I’ll be doing my part to instill this performance over message skill…and I’ll pass your blog on so you won’t be getting any nasty spam from my students.

By: JayMonster

JayMonster — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:46:33 +0000

Maybe they could cut a deal with SnapPreviewAnywhere (or whatever they are called these days), and create the world’s most annoying product.

By: mc

mc — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:57:53 +0000

great post!

thumbs up.

By: SZap

SZap — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:05:43 +0000

What a wonderful and timely rant. I forwarded this on to the media group in my company because they were considering doing this sort of thing and I had the same reaction to the concept as you had to the reality. But, for some reason, they’ll listen to you -oh hip blogger, rather than me - highly educated but non-hip person whom they pay to provide precisly this kind of info. :)

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:32:04 +0000

I got the same email and laughed at the “McDonalds to keep my kids quiet” solution. I deleted it and moved on - but now I’m wishing I’d have blogged about it! I’ve got to look at these things as fun blogging material!

By: Kristine

Kristine — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:29:21 +0000

I get the ‘parenting’ ones where they said they read my blog and think I am perfect to test out certain products that they will mail me.

Unless they actually read my blog they would be sending me to CPS.
Just kidding.

Send me a damn Nanny.

By: Sherry

Sherry — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:51:07 +0000

Even though I shouldn’t be very surprised by anything on the Internet anymore I am always astounded by how many people contact me regularly to tell me all about some great new product/service/movie out on DVD they have and how they know I will definitely want to mention it on my blog. Then they happily provide a bunch of links to the site, some images to use, and expect me to leap on it and post it immediately. Without ever offering me a free copy of whatever they’re trying to market.

I only do reviews now for things I actually care about and for the Parent Bloggers Network where we ARE provided with a sample of the product or a free membership of the service in question so that we can actually try it out and give a proper review. And even then I make sure I only do campaigns where I can be honest and say that it sucks if I didn’t like it.

These PR people kill me with their brash spamming.

By: cisco

cisco — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:21:34 +0000

I wonder what the “heading” from the document was…….