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Keep fighting the good fight Todd!

"Luckily there wasn't a baseball bat in my office at the time."

This from the man who once said, "I have a long, slow fuse..." :)

You're right, though: This is really narrow-minded view of "new PR," isn't it?

Whine whine whine...

"Gentle tones" are well and good, but it's a pretty hollow gesture if the next step is a post like this, anonymized or not.

I'm sorry that this experience inspired you to seek out a blunt instrument, but patience with those who ask for our expertise is pretty much part of our job as counselors and educators.

People seek us out because we have capabilities and a skill set that they might not. And while it's often important as a coping mechanism to vent such frustrations to peers, doing so in public is awfully reputation-limiting.

Here's a key distinction: I came across this post via your twitter. While you claim empathy with the frustrations that Josh Hallett expressed there ("it's always fun to listen to marketing people who know nothing about the web, talk about it"), he's coming from a MUCH different place. He's dealing with folks who appear to claim expertise where little might exist. On the other hand, someone sought your expertise and you decided to tell everyone that you had to take a call from someone who... just. doesn't. get. it. Big difference.

10:1 the unnamed PR person found out about you through your blog. Probably still reads it. Now s/he has to deal with the private humiliation. Be surprised (and apologetic) if you ever get a call back.

Not. Cool.

Sorry, TD... Expected better from you.

Phil, I hear where you are coming from, and you can rest assured that I had some misgivings about this anonymous "outing." If they call me on it, I'll deal with the tough conversation.

BUT, here's the thing: the person who called me is a seasoned PR pro. They sell their PR counsel to clients. They contact the media on behalf of those clients. They represent us (the PR industry). They should know what they are doing, both in terms of Social Media (at least a little) and certainly when it comes to "traditional" PR approaches.

In other words, they are "claiming expertise where none exists."

(If this had been a corporate marketer, the tone of this post would have been MUCH different. I'd have been thrilled that they were asking such questions because it would represent a willingness to think differently about marketing, vs. representing just-another-new-tactic.)

I had much more patience for this person's questions up 'til the point where they told me that they were going to use the SMNR to SPAM a list of 100 reporters. It made me question the rest of the conversation we'd been having.

If they read my blog (or yours, or Josh's), they'd know that that tactic was just-plain-shitty PR.

If they read my blog (or anyone else who writes about SMNRs), they'd know that these "new" releases are about democratizing access & spurring conversations for all comers, not just select media. They'd also know that there is nothin' "social" about a SMNR that never gets published to the web.

But, again, I acknowledge that I came across as a cranky prick today. It just wounds me to see PR pros hawk the SMNR to clients because it's the "new thing" - without taking more time to investigate its basic principles. Such approaches will ultimately turn off both reporters and clients, because they won't accomplish anything more than traditional releases ever did.

Todd wrote: "BUT, here's the thing: the person who called me is a seasoned PR pro."

Okay, being a seasoned PR pro and still sending out mass, unpersonalized emails to journlists is pretty poor. It's also too darn easy (been guilty of that in the past). Better mail 'em so that at least the stories and etc. are personally addressed.

However, social media and esp. the SMNR are still very new. Very much in their infancy. "Seasoned" is a relative term. And, I bet, most PR pros don't deal in social media.

It's mostly a consumer product approach, and slow to grow in many/most B2B or trade markets.

So, any educatin' that can be done is good.
-- Mike
(who doesn't know why he's not typin' his "g"s)

Fair enough. I was a jerk yesterday.

Ready for a vacation.

I don't think you were wrong. I've been in PR a while now, on the vendor side and I think there are two issues at work here. Those of us under 30 who understand how all these mediums work, DIGG articles about stuff we like, join social networks, use mass texting and basically live with these social technologies, in short - get them. But the heads of these PR firms clearly DON'T. They task junior people with coming up with buzz word solutions for clients that clearly don't fit the bill. My own shop has attempted to get a urinary track infection medication a MySpace page... brilliant. So you were not wrong in being frustrated, I feel the responsibility should be on PR to figure out what our friends in marketing did 2 years ago.

I recently wrote this post on how PR people botch outreach to bloggers:

http://vineberg.blogspot.com/2007/07/pr-people-still-botch-blogger-outreach.html