Dear PR Flack:

Let me see if I have this straight:

1. At 12:19pm on a Saturday afternoon, you invited me to your client’s event.
2. I politely accepted — five minutes later — at 12:24pm.
3. You write back, three days later, to tell me that I didn’t make the cut because I didn’t reply fast enough (what!?) and because I’m not “credentialed media” (which, in fact, I am).

Please. This is not how professional PR works. It’s not even how a second-grader’s birthday party works. How do you think being uninvited — because you wanted someone cooler to come instead — disposes me to your client’s brand?

I can’t wait to run into your clients at Tales of the Cocktail… what an interesting story I’ll have!

Cheers,
~Anita

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:

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:

Thank you for the great laugh this morning.

You want me to pay you nearly two hundred dollars for the privilege of entering a blog-awards contest in its inaugural year with no proven track record or credibility? That’s hilarious!

xoxo,
- Carol

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:

No, I won’t give you free pictures from my Flickr stream to send out on a press release to trade mags.

xoxo,
- Sam

Dear PR Flack:

Gosh, your client’s shindig sounds divine. I’d be delighted to attend!

Pardon? You weren’t actually inviting me? Oh, how deliciously witty you are, asking me to pimp out your little event without consideration. Do you work for free, too?

xoxo,
- Anita