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Lazy Public Relations

I just received this email:

Hi Rick,

My name is John Sxxxx of Sxxxx & Associates Inc. ([URL]).

We are a public and media relations agency in Toronto with 14 clients, mostly in technology.

For some reason, you have landed in our contact database. To keep our communications targeted, I would love to better understand your editorial interests - that way we can ensure we limit contact with you, only to those areas in which you are interested.

I invite you to visit our website for a better understanding of our clients what we do.

Many thanks for your response to ensure targeted communications.

John Sxxxx.

[Contact info]

I have complained here before about PR practices that irk me and have been accused by some PR bloggers of having a chip on my shoulder about the profession. As I do each time I write one of these PR rants, let me note that I worked for a year in PR, so I know something of what I speak, and having worked for years as a business journalist, I'll be the first to admit that the role PR folks play in business journalism is essential, much more so than most journalists would probably like you think.

But I also know that it's a service job that requires a certain amount of selflessness, deference and tact that didn't appeal much to an arrogant S.O.B. like myself (a friend recently suggested a better term for what I do might be an "insultant" rather than "consultant"). That is, PR requires a lot of legwork and research, knowledge of the interest and peccadilloes a vast number of journalists -- or at least the skills and resources to find track those down when necessary -- a personable nature, good writing skills and, ultimately, enough modesty to never stand in the spotlight yourself after doing all the hard work to make client look as good as possible and spoonfeed the journalist the story. In short, it's a hard job. Thus, I suppose it's not surprising that so few do it well.

John Sxxxx is, in my estimation, one of those who does not do it well.

This is not the first time I received this same email from John. He has sent me very similar messages at least four times in the last six months. The first time, I replied with a wordless link to a search of my name on Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=rick+bruner

I have been online for a while and have several web sites, am a book author and have done a lot of public speaking, replete with conference biographies, hence, I'm very easy to Google. Anyone looking to learn something about me doesn't have to work too hard at it. That was the message I was trying to convey with my previous rely to John's enquiry.

To see this pathetic note land in my inbox yet again makes me think, John, WTF? It's all I can do to be so civil as to not spell out your last name and link to your site and mock you that publicly.

The point is, why the hell should I do your job for you? "For some reason" I "landed" in your database? You make it sound like it's my fault, like I furtively took a turd there, or something. Might that not have something to do with the fact that you put me in your database, but apparently didn't take the effort to make a note at the time about who I am and what I do? Effectively, you're telling me here that you have no idea who I am. Why the hell is it, then, that you still regularly send me press releases at a rate of about one each week?

I am supposed to go to your web site to see what industries you work with, yet you have my URL right in my email address and still it's never occurred to you to go to my web site and find out what I do and maybe jog your memory as to why I'm in your database?

Get a frickin' clue. Or hire a flunky to call me to ask me on the phone, as we used to do when I worked in PR and were updating our database. Or better yet, please, just delete me altogether.
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