Suburban Oblivion

As a blogger I’ve been dealing with PR reps for a good few years.

Some of them have been really great- the ones who pay attention, get your name right, and are generally polite without being pushy are a blast to work with. There have been a couple who left the companies they worked for that I was actually sad to see them go.

The bad ones- the ones who call you by the wrong name (or just the name of your blog), don’t bother looking to see what your blog is about, or are just plain rude I generally send straight to the circular file. No harm, no foul. A bad pitch is generally to be ignored.

Today I saw a new level of low from a PR rep that just bordered on slimy, to the point of pissing me off.

No secret Paul and I have our pet project, Daily Shite, which we run together. He handles the technical stuff, I deal with our authors, and we handle all content submissions together. No decision is made by either one of us, we do it all together. The site lists us as co-owners, and I like to think we truly are a team in all aspects of things.

So when two people are a team, why exactly would a PR rep feel the need to skip the website’s quite prominent contact form, and instead go to the personal website of the male half of that team, and send him a pitch email to his personal email address, suggesting a certain video might appeal to the Daily Shite audience?

Might it have something to do with the fact that the content of that video was 2 half naked cheerleaders trying to get out of a speeding ticket by doing things like rubbing brownies all over their boobs?

The thought process seems quite obvious here- male and female jointly own site, track down male and try to circumvent female and hope male is dumb enough/blinded by boobs to try to talk female into running content that is clearly out of line with what is usually posted on said site.

I know boys can be a little on the slow side, but really? I wouldn’t be marrying the man if he were so dumb that a pair of tits made him lose all coherent thought to the point of suggesting we run something that violates our site policies. (On the contrary, I happen to think he’s quite brilliant.)

PR people have a hard job as it is, and this sort of slimeball shit does not help the reputation of an industry that is still trying to find it’s feet with bloggers and new media.

I’m glad most reps are not this sleazy, and I sincerely hope LBK Global learns a little something from their mistake, because they have just earned a place on the PR wall of shame.