Dear PR Flack:

When I send you an email asking you to stop calling me, the correct response is NOT to call me again.

xoxo,
- Anthony

Dear PR Flack,

I’m speechless at the suggestion that you want us to run your “original” (read: promotional) content on our blog for free.

Please let me know if you find any bloggers gullible enough to take you up on that; I have some swampland in the Everglades that I’m trying to unload, so I’d love to have their digits.

xoxo,
- Anita

Dear PR Flack:

I am not so stupid as to mistake “confirming receipt of news” for anything other than annoying nagging.

xoxo,
- Mike

Dear PR Flack:

That phone call we just had? Um, y’know, the one where you? asked me? the food blogger? to review your client’s organic spa line? And wouldn’t stop uptalking? And couldn’t figure out the name of my blog? And interrupted me?

Are you, like, fucking kidding me?

It took every last ounce of self-control I had not to hop a plane to Boston this afternoon and bitch-slap you myself.

xoxo,
- Carol

——

::: ring ::::

::: ring ::::

Me: Hello?

Male voice speaking very quickly, but also uptalking: Hi, this is [NAME said too quickly to catch it]? from [PR FIRM] in Boston? and we are calling to confirm? that this is Carol? from The French Review web site? and we were following up to see if you were interested in writing a story? on your Thomas Keller French Review blog? about our organic spa line?

Me: (pause) I think you may have the wrong number; would you mind repeating that?

Male voice: I was just wondering? if this is Carol? from the French Review blog site? and if she was interested? in writing a review about the organic spa line? we emailed about last night?

Me: I believe you have the wrong number.

Male: But, like you write the Thomas Keller French Review food blog? right?

Me: No. I write a blog called French Laundry at Home, in which I cook every recipe in The French Laundry Cookbook and write about it, and…

Male: (interrupting) Right, the French Review food blog.

Me: Did you just interrupt me? First you call with the most inane, non-targeted, uptalking request, and then you have the nerve to interrupt me when I’m trying to clarify something for you and perhaps help you along your merry way?

Male: (silence)

Me: Take me off your list. I have your firm’s name and number on my Caller ID, and if I ever get another call like this from you, I’ll contact the Better Business Bureau, PRSA, and the Boston Globe to let them know what a crap shop you’re running. Understand?

Male: But can I at least confirm that you write the French Review Thomas Keller food blog site?

Me: Are you fucking kidding me? No. No, I do not write that site.

Male: But then… um…

Me: Bye-bye now.

:::: Click ::::

Dear PR Flack:

What, exactly, were you trying to get across with the voicemail that began:
“Hi, we just wanted to reach out to you to touch base with you so we could connect with you…”

Um, does your firm give douchebag vocabulary lessons before they let you pick up the phone?

xoxo,
- The Tech Chick

Dear PR Flack,

How ironic that your boss’s most recent blog entry focuses on crafting better pitches. Too bad you didn’t follow his advice!

Here are a few tips you might have missed:

1. Cameron is not our blog’s main writer — he posts about every 3 months, whereas I write multiple times a week — so I am not sure why you are addressing your pitch to him.

2. We write about real food on our blog, so Sandra Lee’s new book is not going to be of interest to our readers.

3. We partner with Amazon AStore, so I can’t imagine why you’d think we’d be interested in sending our readers to [your client's competing site].

If you can’t be troubled to do even the most basic research, we can’t be troubled to read your pitches. Please remove us from your firm’s contact list immediately.

xoxo,
- Anita (and Cameron)

Dear PR Flack:

No, I don’t know how many people open my e-mails, but I do know that if they open them they’ll find me calling them by their name, rather than someone else’s name.

As you say in the body of your pitch, people definitely rather like it when an e-mail is addressed to them. Especially one proclaiming to be from an organization that can help you to deliver better e-mail pitches. Mr. Creamer is a wonderful, accomplished chap I’m sure. But I go by Mr. Bloom. Or, even better — for that “personal” touch — you can call me Jonah.

xoxo,
- Jonah

Dear PR Flack:

1) I’m not sure you sent this “Dear editor” email to the right place: I’m not an editor, and I do have a name. It’s pretty easy to find, too, at the top of every post.

2) When you say “I am following up on a pitch letter I sent you a few days ago”, you might want to check that you actually did pitch me before. You didn’t. And thank god for that.

3) Do you see any recipes on our site that call for crappy HFCS- and transfat-riddled candy bars? No? Oh, see, that’s because we write about real food. So why the hell did you send me this pitch?

4) I’m looking at your firm’s Code of Ethics. Does spam-pitching fall under “acting as responsible advocates for those we represent”?

5) If you can’t be bothered to do the most basic research, I have no interest in hearing about your clients’ news. Please remove me from your contact list.

xoxo,
- Anita

Dear PR Flack:

If I may quote your CEO’s blog entry from August 22nd of this year: “In essence, there are many ways one can utilize social media today to become a better PR pro.”

One of those ways is NOT mass-emailing bloggers. Just as you wouldn’t send out a blanket pitch to a randomly generated media list, similar rules apply for social media (especially in the tight-knit food blog world). We expect that PR pros will take a few seconds to weed out inappropriate blogs on a list, learn what the remaining blogs’ foci are, and then customize and target the most relevant pitches and messages accordingly.

After all, if your CEO publicly called out an account rep at [a competing agency] for pitching him and his blog on a service they were representing (which he pointed out, and I agree, was a clear lack of targeting or research on [the other guy]’s part), why would [your agency's] employee commit a similar foul?

One last thing: I think you meant to quote Bobby Flay as saying, “I bathe in it.” Not, “I bath in it.”

xoxo,
- Carol

Dear PR Flack:

Learn how to spell my name, because it ain’t with an “f”!

I shall now commence to ignore you, Caytie.

xoxo,
- Stephanie