Dear PR Flack:

We’re insanely curious whether you’re actually affiliated with the brand you contacted us about — perhaps you’re an overzealous fan engaged in some sort of guerrilla campaign?

Your omigod Valley Girl syntax and loose grasp of proper style — why is “belvedere” lowercase but “Sake” capitalized? — make us wonder whether you’re legit, as does the fact that you’re contacting us from your personal Gmail account.

More head-scratchers: You claim to be “a really big fan” of our site, but don’t know our names. You claim the brand is based in San Francisco, when they’re not. And to top it all off, you’ve apparently confused us with someone who maintains a gluten-free product database. Really, you’ve outdone yourself here.

If you are indeed this company’s PR rep, you might want to reconsider this sort of unprofessional outreach. It certainly isn’t in line with the upscale branding we’re seeing elsewhere for their product.

xoxo,
- Anita & Cameron

Dear PR Flack:

I didn’t reply to your earlier message because, frankly, it looked like spam, or at the very least a massive form letter. One example: Legitimate PR inquiries generally address their recipients by name.

If that wasn’t enough to set off alarm bells, I couldn’t figure out why you’d consider me “one of 20 creative mobile users” to play with your client’s new phone. Maybe you can connect the dots for me?

I’m a professional writer and photographer; I’m not in the habit of creating content for large multinational corporations without compensation. Your offer of a two-week smartphone trial “cover[ing] all postage costs” (um, gosh, how generous!) is perplexing, to say the least. Do you work pro-bono?

xoxo,
- Anita

Dear PR Flack:

Since I write a food and travel blog about Italy, I’m not really sure why you’d think I’d be in the market for your client’s cruise-related content.

I’m glad to know that — if the muse ever deserts me — you “have a team of writers available that can write articles”. For now, though, I think I’ve got that pretty well covered on my own, thanks. I’ll have to pass up the opportunity to work with your “team” this time.

xoxo,
- Sara

Dear PR Flack:

Thank you SO MUCH for scraping copyrighted content from all of our blogs, and definitely thanks too for the technology lecture when we caught you at it. We’re all very well aware of “how RSS feeds are commonly used”, but legitimate content aggregators ask permission beforehand.

And frankly, this isn’t the first time we’ve caught your agency behaving badly online; you might want to pass along to your handlers that sockpuppeting and content scraping are definitely not good ways to endear your spirits clients to the drinks-blogging community.

Tell ya what: If you promise not to scrape from our sites again, we promise not to sue you. Deal?

xoxo,
- The Drink Bloggers

Dear PR Flack:

I don’t even know where to start on your trainwreck of a pitch.

But let’s begin with a little mixology tutorial. Blending herbs or fruit into a cocktail is muddling not “muttling”. When a drink is served on the stem, it’s known as up, not “op.” I’m pretty sure “patron” is a proper noun (not to mention the missing accent over the o). And then there’s poor “caipirinia” — I’ve got to hand it to you there: I think you managed three different misspellings in a single word! I know foreign languages can be awfully tricky, but would it have killed you to look it up?

Garnish with a dash of random capitalization, a liberal dusting of extraneous commas, and a twist of utterly bizarre syntax. Mm, delicious!

Lastly: It may have escaped your grasp, but our San Francisco-based blog doesn’t generally cover Upper West Side bars, especially any that have the gall to charge $38 for a “martini” … made with (wait for it) tequila, that traditional martini spirit.

And thanks, too, for sending your message twice — complete with three giant, out-of-focus photo attachments. We always find that super helpful.

xoxo,
- Anita & Cameron

Dear PR Flack:

If you’re really such a fan of my blog, you’d know my name is not Lauren.

xoxo,
- Jennifer

Your client’s red/blue “Election-tinis” make me throw up in my mouth. Be happy that I have a ‘no-badmouthing’ policy.

xoxo,
- That Bartender-Blogger