Nelson Award

The Nelson Award: PR People Impersonating Rabbis

You almost want to let this one slide on the basis of pure hilarity but, alas, you cannot.

We’ve all been there.  You toil away on your kosher slaugherhouse account, putting your heart and soul into every deliverable when, completely unbenownced to you, one of your “interns” jumps on Failed Messiah and starts impersonating rabbis to further your messaging and respond to critics.  Oy vey!

Unfortunately for the otherwise legit PR firm 5W, that’s exactly what happened.  Regardless of what you may think of their CEO or Gawker’s characterization of him, 5W is probably one of the better pure media driving PR firms out there and they have lots of good people at every level.  However, I don’t think “the intern did it” is a viable excuse anymore.

Social media is a minefield so people rely on their professional services firms to help protect themselves.  If PR firms can’t train their employees from top to bottom on how to navigate a modern media landscape then they are in the wrong business.  I know it happens everywhere but that doesn’t excuse it.  Everyone needs to know the risks and take responsibility when things go wrong.  5W, this Nelson Award is for you.

As a side note, this is a immensely comical thread to read through, if you have a few minutes.  I’d start with the Failed Messiah post that outs 5W and then continue on to the follow-up.  It’s not just the scandal that makes it a good read but the comments are priceless.  I particularly like when they get off topic and start arguing about whether or not Jack Daniels is a bourbon (it’s not).

L’Chaim!

Update: It gets worse.

The Nelson Award: Cut and Paste Pitches

Cut and PasteYou have to wonder how many of these pitches political bloggers are getting every day?

Sure, every once in a while there will be a nutbag who wants to live in your store and blog about it but blasting out pitches about how blogging from a Manhattan Applebee’s is a great way to find “true Americans” (the PR person also felt the need to put this in quotes) is just a misguided way to inspire a backlash. Here’s the pitch that Ben Smith at Politico got the other day:
Subject: Blogging from Applebee’s

Hi Ben -

I hope you are well. I wanted to see if you would have any interest in setting up camp this week or in the next few weeks at Applebee’s in Times Square so you can interview “true Americans” about the election, candidates, etc. We would obviously set up an area for you and provide food throughout the week. We thought this would give you great insight into what Americans think for your blog, etc.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

If the people in the Manhattan Applebee’s are “real Americans,” I will never bother to vote again.  How about renting Ben a car and getting him out of the city to see how the other 99% live?  Plus, isn’t an Applebee’s just full of grinning tourists from other countries here to spend their higher valued currency?

Luckily Ben had the decency not to publish names but I’d kind of like to know who to award this Nelson Award to directly. Is it so hard to read the blog and actually show some sense of context?

The Nelson Award: Bowing to the Red Pen

NelsonIt’s really not worth singling anyone out on this, although Valleywag certainly did, but I’m going to award this next highly prestigious Nelson Award to any PR practitioner who lets clients write their pitches and gets burnt in the process.

Sadly, the pitch letter will survive as long as PR agencies fail to position themselves as anything more than media relations brokers. As PR becomes more and more confused at the great opportunity that lies in front of them to actually interface with the public, as they were originally designed to do, through social media, the industry will continue to remain as low level direct marketers to journalists.

As if PR needed another nail in its coffin, allowing clients to essentially write your pitches manages to take it down another level on the trusted adviser scale to something that is roughly the equivalent of a glorified call center. I think this proves Strumpette’s point all too well.

Lesson: Be smart and give your clients a reason to trust you.

The Nelson Award: Scott Boras

Scott Boras

Today’s Nelson award goes to Scott Boras. While I’m tempted to give Scott Boras some leeway since he’s not really in PR or marketing, I think he has to take some responsibility for one of the worst timed announcements in recent memory.

Let me recap the situation, in case you’re completely unfamiliar with the game of baseball.

Scott Boras is the agent for Alex Rodriquez, who happens to be the best baseball player alive. Alex Rodriquez, or Arod, just had one of the best seasons ever in his team’s storied history and he has the option to opt out of his contract, possibly making $30 million a year as a free agent(he’s already the highest paid player ever at roughly $25 million/yr). In addition to his overall marketability, Arod is also concerned with managing his reputation and never quite felt at home in his home city, New York, due to other players having bigger personalities and stealing the spotlight. Justifiably so, Arod wants to be remembered as one of the best players ever and he’s already done the hard part. By the terms of his contract, Arod has until 10 days after the conclusion of the World Series to announce whether or not he’s choosing to opt out and become a free agent. Oh yeah, one more important detail, Arod plays for the Yankees, which are the arch rival of the recently crowned world champion Boston Red Sox (as a Yankee fan, it hurts to write that).

Scott Boras decided to announce that Arod was opting out of his contract in the middle of game four of the World Series, which, at least in the eyes of the media, proceeded to somewhat overshadow the Red Sox winning the series.

In the 70′s an announcement like this wouldn’t overshadow a world series because the world series is the bigger story. Unfortunately for Arod, it’s not 1978 and, while everyone certainly reported on the Red Sox winning the world series, the Arod story gave a larger body of media much more to work with than a four game sweep. Sure enough, every sports blog lit up with the Arod story, covering everything from the ethics of making the announcement during the world series to speculation on where he would go next. Essentially, there are limitless angles on the Arod story and, in today’s media landscape, there are limitless arms and legs of the media to cover it. The front page may say “The Red Sox Win” but the buzz is all about Arod, and that’s probably one of the best arguments for the Long Tail that I could imagine.

Unfortunately for Arod this is terrible timing for a PR announcement and not only his value but also his reputation took a hit. After game four of the World Series, the few Boston fans in attendance at Coors Field in Colorado even started chanting “don’t sign Arod.” It was that top of mind, even for Red Sox fans. Regardless of whether or not you’re doing PR for a laptop at CES or a designer during fashion week in Milan, timing is very very important.

When all is said and done, Arod will probably get his $30 million but he will probably never be the beloved player that he could have been if it wasn’t for gaffs like this. Scott Boras, this Nelson award is for you.

The First Nelson Muntz Award : PR Spammers

NelsonWhen I started this blog I was setting up the categories and thinking about what kind of recurring themes I might end up writing about. The first thing that came to mind was the somewhat delicious Internet phenomenon of bad marketers being called out on their laziness and poor ethics. While I still consider advertising to be the biggest culprit here, PR certainly is guilty of their share of unethical practices.

Then I had to think about what I would call this award. I eventually settled on calling it the Nelson Muntz award, due to his signature response being so close to what I imagine every blog commenter would actually say in real life after seeing someone get called out.

Today’s Nelson Muntz award goes to all PR people who essentially spam their pitches. In a somewhat controversial blog post today, Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine called out all the PR people who spam him press releases by posting all the addresses of the people he has blocked over the years. Unfortunately for the people on this list, not only is this professionally embarrassing but having your address posted on a popular blog means that most spam bots will probably find you within the week and you’re almost certain to start getting flooded with great deals on Viagra and hot stock tips.

Some commenters have defended the people on the list by saying that they may have bought Chris’ email address on a list with other contacts that they were told were interested in new announcements. Yeah, bad excuse. Would you hire a call center to mass pitch journalists over the phone or queue up some canned message to be blasted out of loudspeakers at a conference? It’s pretty much the same thing. By this point in the evolution of the Internet everyone is aware of spam and those who claim ignorance should not be involved with media.

Who are these people? If you look down the list, you see just about every major PR agency (um, except mine). Weber Shandwick and 5W are at the top of the list but only by a slim margin and, to be honest, it’s rarely the digital specialists at the agencies that make these gaffs. When you track down the culprits of these kinds of mistakes you generally find that they come from account teams that didn’t want to lose their portion of the budget by bringing in media specialists. You used to see similar mistakes when traditional media people reached out to analysts but now most larger firms have made strict rules that only analyst relations specialists deal with directly with analysts. It’s more tricky than it looks when you figure that some SVP somewhere is being judged (and ultimately paid) on the revenue that he or she is being asked to funnel out to another group. It’s doesn’t excuse the behavior but you can’t blame the individuals without blaming the system.

So, to PR spammers and the system that breeds them, I say “ha ha!”

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