Valleywag
Monica, Monica. First you rob me of all that I loved about PR — the illusion that you labor over each email you send to make it personal to me, just me. Now you're threatening to kill our relationship entirely by bringing in lawyers. Monica, how am I supposed to write the news without your help? How will I learn of the glories of your clients? But I think we can still make this work, Monica.
Just ask your colleague at MWW, Tom Biro. After we posted your email, he sent out a companywide missive in response, outlining "dos and don'ts" when dealing with bloggers. A tipster leaked it to us. Give it a read, will you? If there was something in there about making ill-advised legal threats, I missed it.
Here's the condensed version of the note from Biro, MWW Group's director of new media strategies:
In light of an unfortunate situation that occurred with a blog pitch gone bad, now is a good time to reiterate some best practice guidelines for engaging with bloggers.Any chance this helps, Monica? Or are we completely through?
- Don't pitch, talk: Bloggers are for the most part well-versed in PR spin and hyperbole and react poorly to it. Help the writer do a better job.
- "A-List" blogs that consistently receive attention. It's a better tactic to find someone smaller interested in the "pitch." A worth story will find its way up.
- Use links.
- Be brief.
- Don't send attachments.
- Make sure you're not asking for coverage you've already gotten.
- Make sure you're not asking for coverage someplace that just trashed your client.
- Rushing through outreach efforts - to traditional media or online media - is no excuse for being sloppy. If something doesn't look right ask for help.
Comments
nick, just admit it: when you want a good time, you go beatup seal pups don't you?
a computer glitch, eh? don't make fun of you? i can't imagine the "wrath" of your lawyer. or should we expect your big brother?
Sorry, but when you send a very sloppy email to a self-described "gossip rag" with a rich history of posting embarrassing stories, what were you expecting?
@DaveMcClure500Hats: I am starting to feel bad for Monica and can totally picture her as a helpless seal pup :)
Sir Nicholas, show her some mercy.
She asked for it. Fight the power.
'Geat' stuff!
What was just a boring mistake has turned into the funniest thing I've seen all week, maybe all month. Thanks Monica!
@sample032: This is the equivalent of the cold sales call. She wasn't expecting anything more than some positive press, little realizing that most of the people on the Internet (and at this site in particular) are probably a whole lot more tech-savvy than she is. I would love to listen to the lawyer's laughter as she explains it to him/her.
Gotta love how everyone suddenly has a lawyer on call when angry. You could have obscured her contact info though, to keep it classy.
Funny stuff. Can anyone tell me why lawyers are so angry? Does anyone else bring their "wrath"? C'mon guys, you make great money, lighten up!
Nick, you should take this down immediately before Ms. Roberts' lawyers send cease and desist papers to GigaOm.
I say Nick removes the "Geat Moments in PR" article off the site. The "Great Moments in PR" article should stay.
Milk this for another week. I would like to see the form letter the lawyer sends out.
The only lawyer whose wrath I fear is my wife. Many of her clients are large, heavily tattooed, and singularly unpleasant. Worse, some them owe her money.
Wait, I just had an entrepreneurial thought: Maybe Nick could pay me a lot of money to keep my wife's contact info from Monica. Or maybe Monica could pay me a lot of money for said contact info.
The auction is on!
I don't think that would be the best use of Monica's money. She's going to need to be pretty frugal...unemployment doesn't cover a whole helluva lot.
Wow, I wonder if her firm signed off on that email she's sent you. I would have handled that in a completely different way.
For the record, sometimes if you cut and paste something and it looks clean in the email or word doc, it'll screw up in the transition on its own - it's something wonky about Word and the track changes feature. You should see when it happens with a press release over the news wire! Heads really roll then! But, it happens on its own - you have to be very careful.
Haha Monica screwed the pooch again - "apprently" is actually spelled "appArently" in America. The article was also entitled "Great Moments" not "Geat Moments."
My advice to MWW - find better employees or send Monica back to elementary school.
Awesome stuff Nicholas!
@Patricia2: Well, usually the wire service catches the tracking, and you are safe.
Here, I have no comment.
Nicholas Carlson is evil and desperate for press! Who posts things from personal inboxes anyway? It's called privacy, something he obviously knows nothing about.
I don't even know Monica and I feel sorry what you're doing to her! Enough is enough!
You know, Monica, if you're going to go undercover and mingle with the crowd you should at least pick a better name.
Your first post was also really lame:
BY PUNTACANA2242 AT 11/28/07 02:19 PM
You all are too critical. People are dying everyday and people are starving let's get priorities straight. Entry-level employees make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. Leave the poor girl alone. Enough said.
This is a classic 'revenge of the nerds' post.
@Alaska Miller: If she keeps going on like that she risks joining the ranks of the starving herself. At least she will go down fighting!
This is Monica, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
Thanks for all the comments, you can thank me for all the laughs :)
And whoever Punta Cana is, thank you!
"Apprently" her attorney is wrathing you right now?
@puntacana2242: Too stupid to read Valleywag's terms of use? Too stupid to comment on Valleywag! You're banned.
@Jeremy, you'd be surprised. I've seen it happen more than once.
banned? this was just getting good. :(
Yes, too bad -- it was fun watching her dig herself deeper into the hole she's burying herself in. Alas, I'm not sure she can even do that competently.
I look forward to future articles in which Nicholas Carlson shoots fish in barrels, mocks retarded children, and misleads the blind.
Making fun of PR people isn't exactly a sign of with. Especially when you think California is New York.
[valleywag.com]
@TheTypeset: You forget -- or more likely never knew -- that yours truly got his start shooting fish in a barrel. So watch yourself.
@Patricia2: Guess my reps loved me more to catch my mistakes. ;)
I wish EVERY PR company would follow the guidelines of that list. I can't count the times I've received PR emails telling me that they've been reading my site, enjoy it and thought I would be interested in reviewing a product I trashed two months ago.
We've been commenting a bit on this whole hacks-versus-flacks thing our own blog, wwww.inmedialog.com, and one of our readers pointed to this, what she called a " particularly egregious" example of the worst of PR practices. Some of our comments, and yours, wonder how fair it is for bloggers to pick on such easy targets. As a practitioner for 20 years, I say, "Bring it on." Like the jackal who actually does the shepherd a favour by culling the weakest from the herd, having bloggers name and shame these poor practitioners will only make the PR species stronger.
BTW: Poor Tom Biro has missed the boat. This wasn't a case of a "blog pitch gone bad." This was malpractice from the first cut-and-paste. It was engineered from the outset to be a disaster.
Like many bloggers, we get inundated with ridiculous press releases about stuff we'd absolutely never write about.
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