The Good, The Bad, The Spin

In case the point has not been drilled home enough, those on the receiving end of public relations ineptitude are fed up. It started last fall when an editor for Wired publicly posted PR people’s email address–those he deemed guilty of overly annoying PR spam. My favorite comment to this post:

“As a VP in the PR industry, I’d like to suggest a few things to these journalists who like to throw a hissy fit….”

The point missing in this statement is the precedent behavior: PR folks spending a good amount of time and effort spamming journalists. The antecedent behavior is the journalists striking back. Rightfully so.

PR people have long been objects of derision, and now they are being publicly outed. This past week, Lifehacker went a step further by not only naming names in a new PR Spammers Wiki, but showing us how to block a very specific list of PR agencies–a lot of the big dogs are on the list–using my favorite email tool, Gmail. The irony is that Lifehacker is a site devoted to efficiently getting things done.

Here are a few responses. Overall some came out as being defensive, some apologetic and one hedged on being threatening.

• PR Squared
• socialTNT
• Stowe Boyd.

I’m no Buddha*. And likely, neither are you.

The amount of perfection expected for people is unrealistic and often contradictory. The world’s noted scandals are often the results of character flaws of familial, biological and sociocultural origins, of which most of us possess.

Yet the bar is raised particularly high for public figures. It’s at the point of being unrealistic, so much so that I get a sense of cynical, voyeuristic enjoyment from the Peter Dohertys and Dennis Rodmans of the world. People like them, who relish in their careless, destructive behaviors, are refreshingly honest even while being distasteful to some.

Not giving a shit, when compared with the uppity expectations placed on many public figures, or just about anyone who screws up and is publicly exposed for it, is a healthy perspective. Suspending judgment of others is even healthier because the levels of expectation we place upon one another is, on some level, dependant upon our own mistakes and misjudgments. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s PRSA (Sierra Nevada Chapter) seminar was fantastic. Dr. Judy Strauss, co-author of the recently released book, Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, spoke volumes for an hour about what it means to manage reputations online.

I vehemently disagree with one line of thinking she presented. That will be the subject of my Friday morning post, which was actually written before today’s presentation. At the same time, she pretty much puts most public relations practitioners to shame with her knowledge and know-how. And she’s a marketing professor.

At the luncheon I was surprised to hear one of my posts was circulated locally, of which I had no idea. I was flattered. Then I remembered this site’s goal is not just to be critical of the news media, as this post was. I try to reserve salvos for the public relations problems seemingly ever-evident.

So here goes. Read the rest of this entry »