Open Letter to Gina Trapani of Lifehacker
Hi Gina –
I’d email you directly but apparently you’ve blocked my agency’s domain name (along with many esteemed peers).
I have written many times about crummy PR practices, and have acknowledged more than one mistake of our own, over the years. I empathize with your frustration and regret that we added to it.
Sorry if we spammed you. We not only extensively train our folks, but we published a Blogger Relations Bookmark (PDF) that is laminated on each employee’s desk. However, mistakes will happen, if only because we insist on only hiring humans.
But “being human” is no excuse for stupid mistakes; I am not trying to be cheeky. We always strive to improve. If you can dig up the offending email from a shiftcomm.com address, I will publish and critique it on my blog, and will include any of your personal comments as well. We’ll gladly fall on the sword if it’s in service to improving our agency and our profession as a whole.
You’d expect me to say this but for every 999 compliments we get from media and bloggers, it’s a shame that it’s the one crap pitch that gets publicly outed. But that’s a risk built-in to my profession. I suppose that a risk built-in to your own profession is that you have to weed through 999 crap pitches to unearth that one stellar nugget. We each have a job to do, and our own crap to shovel through, eh?
In our case, it’s “spam if we do and damned if we don’t.” In your case, it’s spam if you don’t want it (even if we truly think it may be relevant), but damned if you want a competitor to scoop you on an agency’s one great pitch.
I hope you’ll re-think your blanket condemnation of the thousands of employees who work at those firms listed in your wiki. Thanks to outcries like yours, the PR profession is becoming ever-more cognizant of the need for change, and it truly is changing.
Of course, every industry will have its ignoramuses so feel free to blacklist individuals but, again, please consider giving the many thoughtful, helpful PR pros at those blacklisted firms a second chance.
Thanks.
P.S. – If this note does not sway you, I hope Brian’s note will.
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Todd,
Another thoughtful post from you. I’m writing something to Gina as we speak, and your approach was eloquent.
I am confident that the industry can show Gina and her peers that we value their time as well as their content, and that we can provide value to them even as we filter the signal to noise ratio while everyone – on both sides of the table – keeps learning how to communicate more effectively.
I claim no esteem, but we’re in the same industry, and my little company does a lot of blogger outreach. I also have a somewhat popular blog, and receive unsolicited and shoddy pitches every day.
I welcome this blacklist. No other course of action has prevented many of our peers from spamming, so this is a totally reasonable and hopefully effective step.
I did want to question this
“You’d expect me to say this but for every 999 compliments we get from media and bloggers, it’s a shame that it’s the one crap pitch that gets publicly outed. But that’s a risk built-in to my profession.”
Really? Are you really hitting a ratio of 999 compliments to 1 complaint?
Even if you are, there’s an undercurrent of self-aggrandizement in that statement. And it’s the ethos implied in that undercurrent that make people so leery of marketing folks like us.
@Dave, thanks for the support.
@Darren, if you read this blog regularly, you know that I often try to point out ways that we can all do better: by extension, as I noted to Gina, I truly empathize with the “spam” issue.
Meanwhile I see your point that I may come off as giving my firm a backhanded compliment, and, no, I probably couldn’t point to 999 compliments (would that our media friends were so publicly effusive!), but I can surely point to 999 articles and blog posts that were a direct result of our team’s thoughtful, targeted outreach.
Also, that wiki will do NOTHING to change things since the worse offenders will never learn of it (they aren’t listening) and the agencies who DO strive to do better will apparently never get the chance to prove that they’ve learned those lessons. It also blocks the career paths of the thousands of bright & savvy PR newcomers that graduate from college every Spring.
I guess my main point is that extremism in any form (journalism, politics, religion, etc.) is not productive.
I tracked this back from Twitter and read it from a decidedly non PR point of view. You appear to have incurred a state of not having your calls returned to having your calls being blocked.
I don’t assume to know how your email servers are configured. I don’t assume to know the whole story.
But…
Do you find the prelude to your own comment form to be slightly out of kilter with your “open letter” lament above it?
If a commenter repeatedly abuses PR Squared’s comment policy, then none of their comments will be published in the future (even if those subsequent comments are “good”).
@Jay – LOL, touche, sir.
For the record, we were just one of MANY firms (good ones and bad ones) on that list.
As for the ironic point about my blog policy: I might block the ONE BAD GUY, but not their entire domain (i.e., their blameless colleagues).
I am not again the Public Outing. I am not against the Wiki. I am against Extremism.
Todd, I posted about this to capture my words.
I respect you leaving my comment intact!
So, a touché right back at you.
The one hitch I think that is being grossly ignored in this discussion is that Gina has flat out stated that the companies SHE put on the blacklist are ones that emailed her at her PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS that is only published in one place, not at the Lifehacker one. Her PERSONAL address is a mailbox she just doesn’t want to be pitched and considering that ginatrapani.org isn’t a publication, and her email address is on there for “personal” use, I’d say she does have a valid argument in this particular case.
That said, I see what you’re getting at, Todd. I’m sure there are people on this list who’ve done something stupid once or twice, and I’m sure there are people who are guilty 5,000 times. Unfortunately, this “come to this” and this is the type of reactions that people are having because it just doesn’t ever stop. Yet again, until PR people actually start reading the blogs for 99% of the things they’re “sending tips” on, we’re going to hear this type of thing over and over again.
First off, labeling this ‘extremism’ is unnecessarily provocative, and probably should be reserved for political and religious wingnuts.
I do think the error that Ms. Trapani has made is to block entire domains. From a Chris Anderson follow-up approach on his blacklist:
“It is just the senders’ email address, not the entire domain. I treat the offenders as individuals, and never make the mistake of assuming that their colleagues share their bad habits.”
Aside from this nuance, I see nothing wrong with black lists. Like restraining orders and unlisted phone numbers, they’re one of the many ways we can manage our social accessibility.
I disagree that the wiki would be nothing to change things. It will:
* Make bloggers’ lives easier, because they’ll get less dreck from irresponsible PR folks.
That’s a valuable positive change for a bunch of people, isn’t it?
Systemic change in PR would be preferable, but will be far more difficult.
Finally, I disagree that spammers aren’t listening. Look through the comment thread in that Chris Anderson post. People who were on the list definitely noticed.
Darren – it’s fantastic that you and your firm are so perfect that you feel comfortable piling on top of someone who’s just taken a hit. I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect people to get it right 100% of the time.
Particularly nice move on your part, given that Todd has been one of the people who’s tried to take a lead role in helping educate people as to the right way to conduct PR.
Also worth noting that the mistake in this case wasn’t that the pitch was bad. The mistake was that it wasn’t sent to the editor’s preferred e-mail address….basically she just gave people life imprisonment for jaywalking. Of course, that shouldn’t bother you, given how you’re perfect and all.
@Paul: First, let me refer you to the definition of ad hominem at Wikipedia.
I didn’t claim perfection. In fact, I emphasized that we were ‘little’ and lacked esteem (I didn’t even claim a 0.999 batting average). I felt it was worth mentioning what I do, to add some context to my opinion.
I really don’t want to debate the relative efficacy of our firms. I’m interested in discussing the fairness and appropriateness of this kind of black list.
And, as I said, I think it’s a fair and legitimate tool, giving the treatment someone like Ms. Trapani has received at the hands of marketers.
And since when is disagreeing with someone ‘piling on’? If Todd didn’t want people to disagree with him, I expect that he wouldn’t have a blog.