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When Doing PR For Anti-Spam Firm... Don't Spam

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the things-you-can't-make-up dept.

netbuzz writes "Rule #1 when doing PR for an antispam vendor: Don't spam. This isn't exactly brain surgery, yet the fellow at a PR agency called Rocket Science managed to violate Rule #1 while attempting to drum up publicity for Singlefin, which provides e-mail, IM and Web filtering services to the likes of Juno and NetZero. He also violated Rules #2 and #3." Given the hundreds of press releases I get in my inbox on a weekly basis, PR folks in general need to learn that lesson regardless of their clients.

4 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect Marketing by PylonHead · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually if you have an anti-spam product, then advertising it by spamming is the perfect strategy.

    You'll only reach the customers that need your product.

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  2. *hangs head* by blinder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    while i do not work in pr, my degree *clears throat* is in public relations... and if there's one thing our school taught is... learn to question your bosses/managers/clients. i mean, to be an effective pr person, you have to be able to ask questions like "well, gee, sending a spam might not be the best for our reputation."

    now, in the case of this particular story -- the pr person who prepared this is just, i believe, a moron. the other thing we were taught in pr is that every news organization has something akin to a "wall of shame." these are places where stupid/poorly written/misdirected/etc. releases get posted for all (in the newsroom) to laugh at. this fact is always a motivator for a pr person to get it right (at least one who wants to do a good job).

    included with this is the knowledge that just about every journalst/editor you come across will, of course, have a superior attitude (which i always found funny - because without pr people, journalists would either not get a story or have to do a significant amount of leg work to get it, and well, journalists, also, by and large, are lazy.)

    so, with all that in mind, every release has a lot riding on it, and an effective pr person knows this and just doesn't do a half-assed cluster-fuck of a job in writing or distributing releases. pr people are targets. easy targets. highly mis-understood targets, and therefor its up to the pr people to make damn sure they don't make it any easier.

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  3. Astroturfing, too by jfengel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The submitter is "buzz@nww.com"; the article is at networkworld.com. Of course nww.com is just an alias for networkworld.com. I couldn't immediately tell if buzz == Paul McNamara, but it's at least astroturfing for the site.

  4. Re:Screw ups by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If the guy was some "nobody editor" then why was his email on the list in the first place?

    Pls read TFA - the "nobody editor" was bitching because his name WASN'T on the list of people it was emailed to.

    All of which I might have let slide without remark if not for this final indignity: Nowhere among those 11 Network World addressees, three former employees, and 102 other journalists could I find the name that matters most: mine.

    So he's bitching because ... wait for it ... he wasn't spammed!

    This has got to be the WTF for the day!