Systeme D

16 May 2008

More competition for PR person of the year

Andrew over at Granny Buttons occasionally writes - always entertainingly - about how the magazine world needs reinvention. Now in fairness to Andrew he's a very engaging cove and I'm sure is a rare exemplar of how PR people should carry out their business. But other than him, the PR world doesn't need reinvention, it needs taking outside and shooting (this blog, passim).

Given that CCD PR has now claimed the "Lifetime Achievement Award" for PR cluelessness, that still leaves the 2008 title wide open, and this week's nominee is a Yorkshire-based PR agency whose name I'll withhold... for now.

Until this week the 2008 award looked like a dead cert - see Portsmouth Poll over at Boating Business, who chronicles a particularly snitty little "why haven't you published my release yet IT'S VERY IMPORTANT" spraymail to the editors of several boating magazines. All of whom were in the cc: line, making it far too easy to make sure you could share the put-down with your fellow hacks. Hours of fun.

But this new entrant is making a surprise bid for the prize. The episode begins with a pretty dumbly-phrased enquiry - from their receptionist, so it's clearly a high-priority matter - about getting a reprint of a quarter-page feature we'd done.

"Our client had an editorial" NO THEY DIDN'T. We put stuff in the magazine because we think it'll interest the readers, not for the benefit of your client. If your client wants to "have" some space to get their message across, we have this interesting concept called "advertising". I recommend it.

"...in October or November last year, we think". Right. Thanks for that. "It was called ****** **** Boats". Er, that doesn't sound much like a headline we'd have used, but no matter.

So I search through the files and find an article in January referring to ****** **** Boats somewhere in it, which is close, I guess. Send PDF across and explain how we can sort them out a reprint of the whole article, or if they just want to whizz off a thousand colour copies on their laser, that saves us a lot of hassle and all we'd ask is an acknowledgement.

"Can you send me a copy of the magazine first class". Well, usually how this bit works is that you go down a newsagent, you give them £3.50 and they give you a magazine in exchange, but I haven't really got the energy to cause a fuss so yeah, go on then.

So this morning I get a follow-up e-mail.

"I didn't seem to receive a copy of the issue of Waterways World I had requested, did you send it first class?"

"Yes." (You're really endearing yourself here, Ms Receptionist - as you can imagine we're now going to be doubly keen to give your client "an editorial".)

"Ok, I haven't received it though, did you send it to the address below?"

"No, I thought I'd send it to 10 Downing Street for a laugh."

She's gone a bit quiet now. Gah.

Comments

Another example of pr mayhem and mischief by ccd who are really getting on my nerves, especially siarah khan who is the one i am supposed to always contact, so say the releases her minions send us. I am asking around the next NUJ event and will post up more pr mischief from them on a facebook site perhaps. After being rude in an email to one of my managers and trying to smooth things over like a slimey evil witch, she really has hacked us all off, we no longer use any of there stuff. These public relations managers need to be named and shamed and next time i hear anything I am going to the agencies clients...why not siarah!

Posted by Mary on 7.6.08 16:04

Add a comment

Your name:

E-mail address: 

Comment:

your comment. (E-mail addresses will not be visible, but a server-based mail link will be provided. To guard against spam, no comments which include 'http' or 'www' will be published.)