The Growing Backlash Against PR Spam, And The Rationale For MicroPR

Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker, has created a prspammers wiki where she and others can publicly out PR firms that are spamming bloggers at their personal email addresses, or using other unsavory spammish practices. She announced the blacklist in a twitter message, here, inviting others to add to it.

Various practitioners (Todd Defren, Brian Solis, and so on) have written what I think are heartfelt apologies for the missteps that their firms and the industry as a whole has made. These are being collated at PR Openmic.

Personally, I feel that it is the whole system that is wrong, and piecemeal solutions like blacklists and filtering, and one:one agreements about how I, some specific blogger, should be approached by some specific firm won't work in the long run -- these are all stop gaps and band-aids.

The root cause here is the delusion on the part of the clients that this sort of PR carpet bombing works, that mass media messages embedded in a press release or press release-ish email work, and that we, the bloggers, actually react positively to this junk.

We, the bloggers and journalists, need to stand up and shout, 'Stop! This doesn't work! Shut up! Stop shouting! Stop screaming your bilge! Stop screaming and listen!' We need to shout them down, because they aren't taking our subtle little hints, like deleting the email and not responding. They aren't paying attention. There is no feedback loop, just a messianic faith in the power of PR blitz.

Despite the fact that some PR practitioners publicly state their allegiance to the Cluetrain Manifesto, real conversation is too time consuming for companies: their attention span is too short. Maybe someday, a decade from now, PR flacks will have evolved the new DNA needed to really change. An occasional mutant may pop up even today, but the corporate/pr firm hypocrisy is so general and contaminating to all it touches that even the most enlightened will find themselves turned, just like a well-meaning businessman will find him/herself involved in bribes after a few months in Russia or Pakistan: there is no option.

So, this is an additional argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model. In the open, that can't lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God.

On Twitter, I will simply block people that abuse my willingness to have an open dialog about products with PR folks, or basically anyone else, for that matter. And I am implicitly inviting everyone in my Twitter sphere of influence to participate, too. I want it to be a shared space for investigation into new tools, so by all means, twitpitch me!

But please, please, get out of my inbox. I am using that for completely different things: communicating with people I know relatively well, about mutual concerns. PR folks pushing what they thinks is newsworthy information to me via email is so close to spam that there is no practical difference. So unless I have explicitly signed up to receive it on my email, don't send it. Twitpitch me, instead (the specific of how to do that are here: Twitpitch Is The Future).

Email I have asked to receive is considered 'Bacn' not 'Spam', to use Chris Brogan's term. Brian Solis attempts to make the case that PR folks sending things we might want -- based on their decisions -- should be considered 'Tofu' not 'Spam'. I am sorry Brian, but there is no Tofu, there is only Spam. Just because I personally know a PR person, and have chatted in the past, doesn't give them the right to send me some email about AdjectiveNoun's brand new Transfibrilator 2.0. It's like your a taxi driver proselytizing for a religious sect, or your GP trying to sell you tupperware. The personal social or business relationship is not an open invitation to selling other junk.

I also suggest to bloggers and journalists to do as I have done, and post a persistent link on your blog called 'How To Pitch Me' or the like, and state how others ought to -- and ought not to -- pitch you. I explicitly say 'don't use email, use twitter', but you should each state explicitly how they should do it. I also state that I have a three strikes and you're out rule, after which they are spam filtered.

I predict that we will see a huge shift toward open and small, toward MicroPR, and that the smartest PR professionals will adopt that with relief. They know the Emperor has not clothes, that this scattershot approach to getting the word out is dead. We have to point them in the right direction, and hope they will pick up on the new mode of interaction, but if they don't some other group will figure it out, and those marketing dollars will shift, like a river jumping it's banks.

[Update 6:23pm:

jtoeman directed my attention to this post, Hey Bloggers, Tell Us How To Pitch You, where he asks us to tell them what to do.

Meg Roberts makes some very naive statements in her post, A Young Pro’s Take: Media Relations and the New PR Blacklists, but asks several compelling questions: why don't colleges teach more about pitching the media, and -- even more compelllingly -- what are the training programs in place at the PR firms, if any. I bet it's all slapdash, with new hires expected to learn by watching or doing, with a sort of sink-or-swim philosophy behind it.]

Comments

[Jeremy Toeman]

Stowe - JFYI, I tried twitting this blog post to you, but didn't hear back. Would love your thoughts: http://www.stagetwoconsulting.com/hey-bloggers-tell-us-how-to-pitch-you-95/

[Elliott Ng]

I like Chris Brogan's post especially the part "While We're At It" where Chris says *exactly* what he is interested in hearing more of:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/some-differences-between-pitching-mainstream-press-and-bloggers/

In addition to focusing on *how* you want to be reached (e.g. #twitpitch), having a post prominently linked from the home page that describes *what* at this given point in time you are interested in, would help guide people into finding the people that are most interested in their product. Make this into some kind of microformat which can be extracted from all blogs, and then you've got a great opt-in system that will improve the signal:noise ratio.

And while we are at it, I was a *very good boy* and #twitpitched you following your *exact* protocol while you were traveling this week. I will *patiently* wait for a response for at least another few days between I tweet you about it.

Twitter: @elliottng
UpTake - travel recommendations driven by 20 mm opinions from the edge.

[Todd Defren]

Stowe, good points and I agree with most of what you say here. Certainly we are open to your MicroPR concept, and even practice it in some ways, with some folks. The big challenge is, at some level, quite simple:

1. Even GOOD agencies who are committed to training and to scrupulous practices will make occasional mistakes, or, be misunderstood by a (cranky) blogger, even if the blogger had been approached with what anyone else might have called a "good pitch." (It's just human nature to make mistakes and/or to mix wires).

2. BAD agencies don't give a shit (or are just totally old-school clueless). They play a numbers game. Until they are called to the carpet by every client, i.e., the clients who *are* listening, then they'll keep up their bad practices, oblivious to conversations like this one.

3. GOOD agencies who make occasional mistakes are lumped in with the BAD agencies who do terrible work. This makes the GOOD firms strive to do ever better but has little impact on the BAD firms. Thus a vicious cycle is born.

And thus are weekends ruined. ;)

[Cyndy Aleo-Carreira]

I've been watching this bitchmeme unfold with a great deal of frustration. It's only the big blogs that seem to have these sorts of hissy fits, probably because they can't parse the sheer number of pitches they must receive.

For smaller blogs, it's occasionally like pulling teeth to get PR reps to acknowledge your existence. The world must have changed a lot since I was doing marketing, but old school said you never knew where a great hit was going to come up, so you blanketed everyone. In a world where the Holy Grail is coverage by TechCrunch and so on down the pyramid, too much attention is paid to hitting the big blogs and not enough to spreading it out. Perhaps a lot of the noise and annoyances could be reduced or eliminated if the focus for PR reps wasn't so unbelievably narrow.

[alan p]

Nice article, I riffed off it here:

http://broadstuff.com/archives/930-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam.html

Essentially I think the issue is the very low transaction costs of spam make it too attractive to PR companies to resist, Gina is elegantly raising that transaction cost at a low cost to herself by using social media, so I would expect her to be taking a lot of fla(c)k - but I think she is on the right track!

[Chris]

I think you just like to whine. If you're so important and busy, then why don't you get a personal assistant to weed through your email for you.

[Jackie Peters]

Hi Stowe, excellent post. I like the idea of posting a "How to pitch me" link, as I don't think there's any way to do it any differently than on a per blogger basis. In my experience, forming a personal relationship, weather it's handled through email, Twitter, IM, carrier pigeons is a good first step. It's time consuming for sure, but tends to help us avoid pissing bloggers off. I find it's important to first open a line of communication before anything is sent. Do some research on the blogger and approach them in the most accommodating way that you can and ask if they are interested before sending any actual materials. If every blogger had a "How to pitch me" post I think it would make everyone's life, and job, a lot easier.

[Shay]

No offense, Stowe, but to me bloggers complaining about being pitched too often and too 'personally' is kinda like famous people who complain about the paparazzi taking photos. If you weren't writing about issues that the PR people think*(granted some think less than others) you'll cover - then you wouldn't be a target. Bloggers write - and get readers - and sell ads - and then complain when people send them stuff to write about?

Ok, a lot, A LOT, of PR people suck. But my opposition is about *not* getting enough info - I agree with Todd up there, it's only the big bloggers (like Gina, who has a huge readership) who get blanketed. I have to explicitly ask PR agencies who work with companies who've presented at Under the Radar to send me news - it rarely arrives. They don't send me notices when one of our presenters get funded - I hear from the CEOs themselves, or read it on TechCrunch. Truth be told, I've given up trying to be a 'news about startups' blogger, without the news/exclusives inflow I just ended up parroting what everyone else seemed to know before me.

That said - I've worked with some great PR people who are really on the ball - everyone at Launchsquad consistently has their sh*t together. Atomic PR, Mobility PR, Ignite PR, Conversation Group, Brian Solis, they've all delivered. And not because they're out "conversating" and twittering and posting on blogs about nothing just to get their names out there. Nah, they get me the info I need, make it useful, and make shit happen. Job well done.

[Rick Calvert]

I agree with most of what you have said Stowe. My long comment turned into a post of it's own here: http://tinyurl.com/5hppfh

Hopefully we still agree but I wanted to ask you when you say personal email do you mean an email that a blogger publishes on their blog? Or some unpublished email address?

To me there is a very important distinction between the two.

[Ed Healy]

You wrote: "I predict that we will see a huge shift toward open and small, toward MicroPR..." I don't. A shift? Sure. But, most people are slow to adopt new technologies, and there will always be people who cling to the old. The the case of email, it's just too easy to execute an email bomb. Until it becomes economically unsafe to spam, the practice will continue.

BTW, isn't it curious that email is the new snail mail?

[Stowe Boyd]

Ed - I have made a career out of making early predictions. I said social tools would be big, back in 1999, and people scoffed then. Yes, I think that email is broken, a prediction I was almost tarred and feathered for about 4 years ago at Supernova.

Rick - There is no doubt that a blogger can be inviting people to email all sorts of PR when they make their email known, but maybe not. It's like putting your address in the phone book: it does not mean you want to be spammed.

Shay - I am not saying there aren't good people out there, but that the system is broken because there are enough bad people to screw it up for every one. If only one person once in a while let their dog shit on my lawn, it would be no big deal, but when 20 people's dogs do it everyday, soon I have no lawn, just a pile of dog waste.

Jackie - Thanks.

Todd - see various replies above.

Elliott - I republished your twitpitch, let's set a time to talk when I return from Europe in a few weeks.

Jtoeman - I think I responded elsewhere, didn't I?

Cyndy - I inderstand, but that's a different issue.

[Jeremy Toeman]

Stowe - thanks for the link, I didn't see anything back from you via Twitter (summize for search), FriendFeed, nor comments on the post, so I do apologize if I missed another reference!

[Lux]

It seems to me that the constant pressure on PR/marketing to justify the $ being spent on them is an underlying factor that's not getting talked about as much as it should be.

It's like the cashier at Best Buy who inevitably tries to upsell you on the extended warranty, even on items where it's clearly useless. They're doing it because they've been told that their job is on the line if they do not do it. The cashier knows that what they are doing is going to irritate a certain number of customers, but that's less important to the cashier than keeping their job.

"Naming and shaming" individual employees or even entire firms is like yelling at the Best Buy cashier. It's not going to fix the underlying problem.

[Neil Vineberg]

Stowe, great post. I am publishing this reply in a few places.

Reality Check: Move outside the early adopter, Bay Area-centric community of inventors, innovators and thought leaders, and dive into the information eco-system of a few other billion-dollar marketplaces (food processing, biotechnology, manufacturing, etc.), and the reality check is this:

Few thought leaders have heard of Stowe Boyd and bloggers who write for Tech Crunch, Mashable, and GigaOm, because they could care less about technology’s leading edge. They’re already making tons of money selling meat, poultry, drugs, toys and paper goods, and the last thing they’re doing is Twittering with their community of friends. They’re out there enjoying life and that does not include 24/7 commentaries on the evolution of social media tools and tactics.

I happen to live in both worlds. My clients span tech unsophisticates who’ve never heard of Michael Arrington, as well as tech innovators like Webshots, Jaiku and Jaduka, who drive tech’s leading edge. So I try to approach PR being sensitive to how my audiences (writers and bloggers) want to be approached with information. Every media relationship is important and I’d like to believe I’m trying to build friendships based on conversation, intelligence and respect.

Years ago when I headed technology at Middleberg, we published a State of the Media report, and tracked how technology was changing how PR people were communicating with the media. Back in 1999-2000 email was the rage, replacing snail mail and kitchy press kits. Half a decade later, we have social media and a new group of influencers, especially in tech and music. Bloggers and blogs have emerged as the new tastemakers. We read popular blogs because their writers are smart. And their blogs have caught on because of several other factors: right place, right time, good brand personality, etc.

A few are monetizing their blogs and selling ads, organizing conferences and raising capital needed to grow into giant media empires. So surprise, surprise: PR people are looking for ways to build influence with bloggers.

What I enjoy about the tech community here in the Bay Area (I am a recent transplant from NY) is that bloggers are not just writing about tech. They are helping us think through the future. They are passionate about the subject areas they cover, and their currency is often sheer intelligence, because chances are they’re not making tons of money writing. And so what they are really looking for from PR people is something to write about that’s new, interesting, and relevant. And maybe a conversation about your client that helps inform them…and one devoid of the crap that fills their inboxes day after day.

The problem is they are being inundated with crap and it’s getting worse. So I agree with Stowe and Brian Solis and others: we need to change the premise, approach and the tools. The press release as a tool for driving stories is dead. Yet there is a place for the press release as a placeholder for a company’s story. Pitch letters need to be informational, and not promotional. In other words, let the recipient of your pitch decide whether or not your client’s product/service is relevant. That’s their call. Make a case, have an opinion, suggest other thought leaders who might inform your case, and then get the hell out of the way.

I also believe that there’s something to be said for honesty. You’re being hired to elevate a client’s products and services. It might help if you actually believed in what you were selling and showed passion. My advice to the PR folks out there: if you are selling crap, drop the client and save your reputation. If you cannot make a convincing case for your client, don’t bother. Instead, work for another client.

In 1998, my client Xing was pitching their digital video encoding technology. Only problem was, the Internet was still virtually dial-up. So I said in all good faith and in spite of their nice retainer, I cannot sell this; what else are you doing? They said a few of their developers/interns had written an MP3 encoder/decoder software. I thought ...hmmm, that's new. It might work, and it took a few hours to realize we were talking massive changes in how music was shared and sold. By end of the year, I was working with the five leading companies in the MP3 space riding the Wave that became digital music. Lesson: promote stuff that is relevant and leave the rest to the hacks.

A few years ago I pitched a NY Times reporter on a telecommunications story, and he blew me off. I replied with a powerful, passionate argument and he ended up running a story that was good for the client. He later told me I’d won him over with a logical case. Now he reads my emails. Lesson, sell smart. Smart is your leading edge and the currency that drives sustainable relationships.

Lets move away from bullshit, and share info on products/services in ways that respect the intelligence of bloggers and press. If they want a pitch at news@mytechblog.com, then send it there. If they want to use the Force, then lets go intuitive. I’m a longtime meditator; I might have an edge.

And rather than pitch and sell, simply provide information. When I was talking to a reporter at the Wall Street Journal last year about Jaiku, we found our way to a story on page B1. The conversation was simply, take a look at Jaiku, here are the players in the microblogging space, here are the comments of analysts and bloggers who feel Jaiku is relevant, and here is where I think the sector is going. After that, the reporter did his thing.

At SxSW, I sat down with Stowe Boyd and a client to discuss their technology. Frankly, I wanted Stowe to help influence the company as much as I wanted him to find something to write about among company’s products and services. Then two weeks ago, one of my people emailed a moronic pitch to Stowe about the same client. I apologized to Stowe. Unfortunately, shit happens even in my shop, and it’s gonna take time for us to fix a PR methodology that is broken, as Stowe, Brian and others suggest.

Funny things is, my guy who wrote to Stowe is incredibly effective in PR and he readily delivers stories that land in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, US News and CNN. And he does this as easily as someone in SF can place a story in Mashable or Tech Crunch. In the transformative Bay area PR tech world, my guy is dead meat. And I'm not sure he is tech savvy enough to understand that he is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Patience is needed here on all sides. It’s going to take time before PR practitioners find an approach that satisfies Chris Anderson and Stowe Boyd. But, let the complaints continue. Because that’s the only way to drive change.

At the same time, if we think the rest of the world is ready for the new social media release format, sorry. It’s going to take time for the slow adopters to catch up to the brilliance emerging in the PR space out here in SF. And so my NY guy still has a long life.

I’ve been in this business for two decades. Yet, more than ever, I consider myself a student of PR and believe me, I’m listening, learning and adjusting my own game so that the conversation that comes from myself and colleagues from my agency, is intelligent, considerate, honest and respectful. If we start there, we can find the means for delivering on the promise.

[Barbara Ling]

I'm generally okay regarding pitches (ideally thru twitter) so long as the telephone is not involved. Hate the phone, haven't answered it in 2 months.

Data points,

Barbara

[Doug Haslam]

Stowe,

I really like your attitude toward this. As a PR agency guy I understand the problems that both you and we face in making the perfect solution a reality.

The gaps in our side tend to be rooted in client expectations, lack of training, and an unfortunate (ok evil) reliance on old methods from the dawn of email lists.

Best part is your willingness to work with the good PR people, on your terms, in your search for the best content for you.

[Stowe Boyd]

Lux - I am not really into shaming. I just said I would start ignoring people after the third strike. Gina started the blacklist, but I am generally in favor of open discourse, so that could be positive too.

Doug - Thanks. I think it's going in the right direction.

Barbara - Hmmm. I am liking the phone more (text), and email less, strangely.

Neil - Cool. Keep swinging!

[George Snell]

Complaining about PR people seems to have become a cottage industry for some bloggers. It's unfortunate that journalists don't understand that being pitched and receiving news is part of the job description. Anyway, I weigh in on the topic here if anyone is interested:

http://racetalkblog.com/2008/05/14/another-flare-up-between-pr-and-bloggers/

[Rob D.]

>>this scattershot approach to getting the word out is dead

If only it were that easy. It may be dying, but at the moment the scattershot approach has only suffered a few flesh wounds.

We're at the beginning of probably 5-10 years of a slow, agonizing process.

It's not dead yet.