Over the years I've dealt with a number of people in the public relations field. Some work directly for a particular company, others work for PR or marketing firms that a company outsources its PR work to. Some of the people in the tech PR world are very good at what they do and understand their role in the the process. There are a few rogue PR people out there, however, that make it their mission to stymie article and news story efforts, redirect information requests to the circular file, and in some cases, even try to take revenge on journalists for writing things that interfere with PR's message. Here's a quick story about some of the more ridiculous PR moments in my career as a journalist.
I'll start with the most recent one. Today I received a phone call from a man who works for Mayo Communications, specifically on the SafeMedia Corp account. If you're a regular reader, you probably recognize that name from a recent editorial and a product review that focused on SafeMedia. "My client is not happy," was the first thing of substance the Mayo man said to me after confirming that I am who I said I was when I answered the phone (I was), and asking me if I was familiar with an email he sent to me last week (I wasn't). He then proceeded to tell me that my article (which one, I don't know) was inaccurate, and then said something that seemed to imply that I wasn't supposed to write a review of the product that the SafeMedia CEO sent me to review. The Mayo representative then quickly charged forward on a tangent, but I stopped him. "Wait, are you saying that this product was not sent to me to write about for review? What do you think I do here?" The PR guy did some backpedaling and spinning and took an angry tone with me, at which point I told him that the conversation was over. Had he been in contact with his clients, he would have known that I'd already had a lengthy conversation with SafeMedia representatives earlier in the day, and we resolved to work out the problems that I found when testing their Clouseau device. The lesson: Calm down before you pick up the phone, and don't argue with journalists. Even if you win, you lose. PR is there to help, and you making angry phone calls filled with accusations doesn't help anyone, especially when the issue you're so upset about has already been worked out with your client.
I've requested hundreds of products to review in my career. Usually the requests are denied because there aren't any review units available when I ask. Timing is really everything in this regard; if I time my request right, I usually get what I want to write about. Every once in a while, though, I get some unusual responses from PR. Two cases come to mind in particular: Apple and The SCO Group. Apple PR representatives first ignored several email requests for information about current (not future!) products and a request to review a newly released desktop system. After I left a phone message or two and repeatedly called the PR number, I got in touch with someone. Until that time, I'd thought condescension was a lost art -- a skill abandoned by professionals and left only to rank amateurs. That notion was rudely shattered by the Apple PR woman I talked to, who acknowledged reading and ignoring my email and phone messages, then graciously responded to every one of my inquiries with a perfectly dismissive yet pleasantly bemused air of detached indifference that left me convinced that Apple was not a company I would ever want to write about, buy from, or do business with. The lesson: If you don't think a journalist is important enough to deal with, don't make it obvious. You don't know what publication he will be working for in the future -- if it's one your company depends on for press coverage, you'll regret acting like a snob on the phone. It's hard enough to remain objective about the companies a writer covers without you making it harder by acting like a jerk.
The SCO Group was even worse than Apple. The Apple PR lady could conceivably have been a short-timer who misrepresented his company, but SCO made it abundantly clear that they had a terrible PR attitude. The company representative at the time, Blake Stowell, forwarded my request for a review copy of a newly released version of SCO UnixWare to the Schwartz PR firm, which apparently handled some of SCO's PR work. Someone claiming to be a vice president at Schwartz sent me an email that linked to an article I wrote about SCO CEO Darl McBride's ridiculous comments about copyrighted Unix code in the Linux kernel, and told me that I was obviously out to harm the company with my writing, and that he would not send me SCO UnixWare because he was certain that whatever I wrote about it would be negative. The lesson: The lesson here is pretty self-evident. Not only did this Schwartz VP guarantee that I would never review SCO products (and since there are few other writers who can or will write reviews of proprietary Unix-based operating systems, this is a big problem for his client), but that I would also never deal with his PR firm again. If he's one of the company's managers, then I can reasonably expect the other people at Schwartz to act like him.
These are only three of the worst PR incidents I've gone through. There have been other bloopers that might warrant a mention in a longer, less subjective article on the subject. The majority of the people who work in this field are professional, pleasant to deal with, and make life easier for me while getting press coverage for their clients. I would never want to work in PR, though; I half-admire, half-pity anyone who can stomach this kind of work on a daily basis.
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