My PR agency tastes like cat food
At 9.22 last night, Dr Mumbo wrote about Mark Communications’ bloggers woes. He even predicted it wouldn’t be the last example.
But he wasn’t expecting to return to the subject as fast as this.
But, according to today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Pulse Communications pulled off an even more spectacular example, setting Sydney’s food bloggers a homework style assignment to write about cat food. According to the SMH food bloggers received the following email yesterday:
“By way of introduction, my name is Lucy and I work for a PR agency in Sydney.” She invited them to:
“Write a blog entry (approx 500 words) on ‘Cat Food SO Good it is at the GFWS [Good Food and Wine Show]’ – talk about your own cat, what you feed it, anything quirky you might do with your cat and what place you think cat food has at the GFWS.”
Apparently the apology from MD Samantha Allen followed a few minutes later.
So much has been written of late about the reckless lack of discrimination within the PR industry. I couldn’t agree more. It seems these days senior management is thin on the ground and a lot of the day-to-day work of interacting with the media is being carried out by junior staff. If this latest incident is anything to go by the results are not good.
As a senior PR professional I think it’s about time we as Senior PR Management took responsibility for for the profession. At its best, PR is about initiatating conversations with the media (which includes online media BTW) and the public . In the case of this latest mass mailing, it would be too kind to call it a farcical monologue. Good God people – let’s get a grip!
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