The Definitive Guide To PR People

How they spam, call and categorize you, and how to stop it

So the other day I thought to myself — do reporters realize exactly what PR people do? What their jobs are? How they talk about reporters? How they find reporters? I asked a reporter too, and they said, “Ed, it’s 11PM, please leave me alone.”

At the bottom of this I’m going to put a list of things you can do to make yourself less annoyed by PR people. Feel free to scroll past the explanation if you don’t care about the why.

I really want bad PR people to stop. Either stop doing the bad things or quit PR because I’ve stolen their chair every day for a year. One of those two. The only way bad PR people will stop, though, is if reporters punish them.

If you’re a reporter and ever wonder how “the sausage is made,” and by “sausage” I mean “how Public Relations people regard and treat you.”

Media Lists: The Battery Hen Farm of Your Emails

PR people use popular services I will not link to, because they are thirsty and annoying, like Cision, Vocus and MyMediaPro to get your contact information. Some of these services I believe, though I’ve never confirmed and I’ll never bother to, use outsourced companies to trawl the internet for your information. They then put it into a database that PR people pay for. They categorize each reporter by publication, industry, etc. and will gladly just take whatever emails they can find, such as your personal Gmail, even if it’s bootybutt420@hotmail.com. They also have your phone number, if they can get to it. Some of them get quite clever and search your Twitter for it!

These services cost thousands of dollars per seat.

How This Leads To A Bunch Of Stupid Irrelevant Pitches

Within these services you’re categorized. Now, this isn’t done through rigorous research, at least not from what I’ve seen, but by skim-reading one thing and assigning a vague category like “tech” or “gadgets.” PR people then go on these services, search for an entire category, package that into a media list in excel and then mail merge the same pitch to everyone on it without a second’s thought.

I won’t say “not all PR” because it’s more like “almost all PR.” If you disagree as a PR person, I will gladly hear from you at idontcareyoudumbasshole@edzitron.com and publish your response here.

What’s A Mail Merge? Have I Seen One?

Form pitch, mail merge, spam, whatever you call it — it’s done in a few different ways. If they use Outlook, they’ll put in a spreadsheet all your details, connect that to Word where the pitch is written. Inside said pitch there’re fields connected to the excel spreadsheet — usually [[first name]] or somesuch business. When they hit “send,” it then spits out the email.

Now, sometimes they screw up and they don’t get the field right, which is why you sometimes get emails that say “Hello [[FIRST NAME]]” because they didn’t do a test run.

Some services — Yesware, for example — can automate this even more easily. I hear Sendgrid does it to. I don’t know what it is but it’s there.

They Track Your Email Opens and Clicks

PR firms use a variety of pieces of software to send you — yes you, Mr. or Ms. Reporter — an email with a tracking method in it. This is usually done via a 1x1 pixel in your email. Also, any link in said email you get can sometimes have a link inside it — in Yesware’s case, it’ll be t.yesware.com/blahblahblah instead of whatever they linked to. Now they know when/where you clicked said email. I do mean when and where, as they’ll know the time and the location. How creepy is that?

They Make Weird Dossiers About You For Their Clients

Now, me, I’ll sometimes do these, but it’ll be mostly “they’re going to want to hear about this, this and this, they’ve written here, and don’t get discouraged if they don’t feel as excited as you do about your things.”

Some PR agencies put together these amazing, labyrinthine, 600-word things about the reporter — exact talking points, likes, dislikes, facts, personality traits (I’ve put “they’re a bit grumpy” for one reporter because, honestly, some people are. I am! Get out of my house!), a picture, a list of their favorite things, their hobbies even (I’m serious). It’s like an episode of a cop show except cops have real jobs.

They Phone/Text/Email/Tweet/Facebook/LinkedIn You And Will Go To Many Lengths To Get Your Information And Use It

The virulent term “hustle” has been adopted by our friends in a few different ways to mostly euphemistically say the word “harassment.” This means:

They’ll tweet at you — and yeah I did it in the old days, alright? I’m sorry — asking if you got that thing they sent ya, or if they’re really bereft of logical thought, straight up pitch you there and then. Sometimes across multiple tweets. They’ll direct message you on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. You already know this — but the why is because they’re not told to do it differently, and they don’t understand how human beings communicate. They’ll call you. Why do they call you? Somebody told them to. Be angry at both the teacher and the student. Don’t call their manager or complain to them — the manager most likely will blame the student, claiming they’re dumb or something. The managers in question are the ones making them do this, and will make sure that they keep their worthless jobs. As an aside to the calling thing? They’ll call your personal cell. How did they get it? Check your Twitter. Seriously. You may have said it publicly once, and these quasi-human people will find it and use it. They’ll come to your place of work. This has happened. Don’t let them in. Call the police if you want to. That’d be funny. They’ll text you. I…yeah, I just respond with “who is this?” and get very angry. Usually works.

So Why Do PR People Do Shitty Things Nobody Likes?

Again, if you want to disagree here with me, please email me at shutup@edzitron.com and I’ll post whatever you want here. I may remove letters or words. There’re exceptions, but they’re not common. On a larger scale just imagine amplification of this. I’m talking about media relations, god, I really don’t care if you’re in PR and don’t like this.

The basic structure of a PR firm is broken. Here’s how a lot of them look:

One principal, sometimes a co-founder. They want to get as far from doing work as possible and get as close to getting money as possible.

Way too many managers. I’ve seen as bad a ratio as a 3:1 manager:underling.

Lots of young people who are taught by books written by people who haven’t done PR for years.

An office manager of sorts. They hate everyone.

The managers/principals do the new business, making promises that said underlings have to execute. Note, said promises aren’t informed by a constant flow of working with real reporters, they’re based on case studies of other people’s work, or the work that said people have done in the past that they’ve forgotten about.

So, the promises are there. The underlings must pitch whatever they were promised to pitch. If they have no relationships, which they don’t in many cases because they’re not taught to go out and “talk to humans” and “read,” they have to live up to the promises via whatever means they can. This adds desperation, anxiety and fear to them — powerful emotions that drive humans to do things they’d be morally against. There is little or no training for them, there is little or no support.

It’s Also A Money Thing

So, some napkin math — if an agency has 5 clients at $5000 a month, that’s $25,000 a month. Before benefits and office space and tax and other math I don’t want to do, an employee is around $3.9k a month at a $40k salary. So assuming there’s two of the little bastards, and other costs are ~$3000, that’s $14,200 for whoever is at the top. Pretty sweet, right?

PR people can charge $5000 to $20,000 a month for services. Realistically, the ones that are spamming you sideways are getting $7k-15k a month. If they have one marquee client or pipeline, they can keep the good times a-rollin’. This is especially relevant to the big agencies that have the big people that you want to talk to as a reporter. Cutting off an access point is hard. Trust me, I was once a reporter and I may have told a PR person that he was treading on egg shells and I sure got in a lot of trouble and had to apologise. I’m still not sorry because the guy was being a dick about my knowledge of MMORPGs. I know, I’m super cool.

So, if their business model is able to be maintained by simply spamming a bunch of reporters with something semi-legible, why bother training them? They need to be smart enough to be on a phone call and not sound totally moronic, create call agendas, write aimless press releases and so on, and really not much more. The more expensive they get, the more they need to be able to mold defenses against failure so that clients don’t get mad.

In essence, PR is a high-margin, low-effort business to these people. You, as a reporter, are the way they get paid. Kind of.

How To Make PR People Less of a Problem

PR people do have a job, and do have good things sometimes, and you probably want to hear about them.However, most PR people don’t make the basic effort to connect the dots, slamming square pegs into round holes like angry, drooling children. If you want to stop the shitty, shitty PR people, here’s how.

If You Truly Want Them To Stop, Even If They’re Big And You Need To Cover One Of Their Big Clients, Blacklist Them: Sorry, but if they’re spam-pitching you and you want them to stop, cut them off. Entirely. Even if they have a meaningful company you really need access to. This is difficult. I know. Seriously. I get it. But it’ll work eventually. They’ll either lose business from that big company, or they’ll change. Really, Stop Working With PR Agencies That Do Shitty Things: I know your readers want the latest Android whatever phone review that you did and everyone else did. These big, hundred-million agencies are operating on a mob-style level — they can do what they want because they have the power to make you stick to it. I guarantee you — if you stopped working with an agency with big clients because they spammed you bullshit, a correction would occur in the industry. Heck, throw an email to the CEO of said firm and say “hey, I’m going to do this if I or any of my colleagues ever, ever get another form pitch or cold call from them again.” Bad dog, bad. Block Agencies That Suck: Here’s how in Gmail. You can also search for *@domain.com in Gmail, or create a rule that says if you get an email from said *@domain.com it goes straight to the trash or archive. Shame Them: Shame is a powerful teacher. It’s one thing to say PR people suck, it’s another to say a repeat offender or an agency sucks. I know. You’re a good person. But this is the only way they’ll learn, like rubbing a dog’s nose in their poop when they poop in your inbox. Tweet out their agency name, or their personal name, or whatever. It’s the only way they’ll learn. Block images: This’ll take care of email tracking. Look Into CAN SPAM law: I need to dig into this a lot more, and I’m the actual opposite of a lawyer, but I’m fairly certain that mass-spamming people who haven’t opted in (I assume they use that part as the way to get around liability in their fetid souls) is a violation. Start reporting. Seriously. Report agencies en masse. Make them literally pay. If Someone Calls Your Personal Number (even if it’s your work cell), Tell Them You’ll Call The Police If They Call Again: Doesn’t mean the cops will do anything but they sure aren’t calling back. If Someone Calls Your Work Number, Say “never call me again unless I ask you to.” Then hang up. That’s it. If they call again, pass around the office their name, get everyone to block them. See point 3. Opt out of literally every single database: For Cision, email marketing.team@Cision.com. Apparently tkim@vocus.com is the contact at Vocus. If they refuse, 100% (if you’re part of a media outlet with a legal department) have your internal counsel email. If you’re a freelancer feel free to contact me and I will give them more shit than they know how to deal with. I’m not a lawyer, I’m just super annoying and good at it. Hit “unsubscribe” at the end of any email sent, note the agency. If you get emails after 10 days, email them and say they’re assholes. Or report them to their service. If the service provider ignores it, see point 4, and uh, I’ll get back to you on another solution. If You Have A Personal Website, Get Whois Privacy: If you’ve bought a domain any time, ever, you’ve given them your address and possibly email and phone number. If you didn’t buy Whois privacy, anyone can pull this info using any number of Whois query services. Including PR people. This is a way they can get any info on you they want. Scour Your Social Media For Information You Shared and Delete It: I’ve seen a lot of reporters who have tweeted to people “my email is XXXXX” on Twitter. Just search “@reportername my email” or something. Sometimes they do this with their phone numbers to sources (“hi can you contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX I’m doing a story on dog hats”). Happens occasionally on Facebook, but in both cases, go *searching* and see if you can find a particularly public place you’ve put your info and delete it. Always Opt Out Of Any Conference Mailing List: They bury them in the media application section so you miss it, and it’s always ticked first, but make sure you *untick* the thing that says “do you want to be on our big shitty media list.” It may not say those words. If You Have A Personal Website, Check Your Resumé And Contact Form: I’ve seen no less than four reporters who on their about pages have had a contact form, which is great, and then had their resumé, resplendent with full contact info, as a PDF. You shouldn’t have that. If You Have A Work Business Card, Don’t Put Your Cell On There: If you absolutely must, get an extra pay as you go phone or Twilio number. Get your company to pay for it if you work for one. If you really want to put your cell on there, well, ask yourself why. Get a pen and write it. Or email them it if you really want them to have it. Don’t give your cell to PR people unless it’s me, because the last thing in the world I want to do is call anyone, ever. The Three Strike Policy: Either action this on an agency basis or a personal basis — if they do something you don’t like once, say “I don’t like that, this is your first warning.” Inform them this is strike 1. Then 2. Then on 3, blacklist them. Deadly Assassins: A team of highly trained former SEAL agents can solve many problems.

Remember, if you’re in PR and disagree with this post, please be sure to contact me at shutthehellupidiotidontcarewhatyouthink@edzitron.com.

If you’re in the media and need more help upsetting PR people you can find me on the Twitter at my webzone @edzitron.