Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category
eriksr on August 11th, 2008
Cory Doctorow, science-fiction auteur and chief Boing Boing blogger, has an interesting article up at The Guardian that starts with a note about a deal between the music industry and internet service providers, but goes on at length about the evolution of the struggle between copyright holders and the businesses — or people — who want their content.
It got me thinking back to many years ago, when I was a freelance journalist. I enjoyed the last, best days of a profession that had a great real of respect for copyright. This was back when writers were able to charge extra for their work appearing online, before everyone had a Web site. But then something happened — publishers became hungry for content. All that copy was going to attract eyeballs, and eyeballs meant advertising dollars. Publishers printed their writer’s work online with impunity, rarely bothering to ask for permission or even to notify the writers.
We’ve all forgotten what copyright was about
And then, as if my day couldn’t get any cheerier, I came across this post from copyright lawyer William Patry. Patry announced that he is ending his blog, partly because “The current state of copyright law is too depressing”. This quote in particular jumped out at me:
Much like the U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners.”
Thanks, William, for summing this up so beautifully. When I first read up about copyright more than ten years ago, I remember learning that it one of the motivations for it was to help keep things fresh. Without copyright law the world would be flooded with derivative, unoriginal work (just like at all the Winnie the Pooh crap out there) is poison for businesses — people want the fresh and new.
This is an analogy for your life
Sorry state of affairs aside, Patry’s dirge is both a warning and a reminder: Don’t get bogged down trying to preserve something that is failing, don’t stop learning, and don’t be evil. Reminds me of Google, but its a good mantra to keep in mind in your daily life, be you marketer, public relations professional, or otherwise.
eriksr on July 30th, 2008
I have a secret. My secret is that I love to read about companies making asses of themselves. Not because I suffer from a severe case of schadenfreude, but because there’s just so darn much you can learn from these situations.
And, yeah, they sometimes make me laugh.
Case in point: One of my favorite blogs, Consumerist (a veritable font of best practices or case studies for anyone dealing with consumers), recently wrote about how Eforcity Eforcity bribed a customer to remove a negative Amazon.com review she had given one of their products with a refund.
A copy of their letter is below. But stay with me here.
Your first lesson today, class . . .
First off, credit goes to Eforcity for being proactive about the things people are saying about it online. Way to go! If every business was this proactive we might have a veritable consumer utopia on our hands! So I award you 4 million points.
But wait. I am now about to penalize you those 4 million points, plus 12 million more for being such an, well, I don’t want to use the “ass” word.
So let’s say donkey.
The value of feedback
Customer feedback is an open and honest dialogue between a customer and a company and one customer and other customers.
The key here is “open and honest.”
But if that feedback is manipulated by the company, then you lose the “open and honest” part. And not only does it make the feedback pointless (which is why Eforcity loses 4 million points), but even worse (and this is why Eforcity loses an addition 12 million points) it makes the company look like a manipulative bully.
Which creates a helluva PR nightmare, doesn’t it?
And, straight from The Consumerist, here is a copy of the letter the customer says Eforcity sent to her.
The letter:
Dear Sarah X XXXXXXXX
RE: Amazon order #XXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX
Invoice #XXXXXXX
Item title: SAM M300… Car Charger
Thank you for your recent purchase with Eforcity on Amazon.com.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We would like to offer you a refund, if the negative feedback is removed.
Please reply to this email directly and let us know. As soon as the feedback is removed, we will go ahead and process a refund.
Please follow the below instructions to remove feedback on Amazon:
1. Go to http://www.amazon.com/your-account.
2. Find the pull-down menu next to View by Order. Select ORDERS PLACED IN THE LAST 6 MONTHS, and hit the GO button.
3. After you sign in, you’ll find a listing of your recent orders. Select the relevant order and click the VIEW ORDER button.
4. You will find a feedback section 2/3rds of the way down the page. To remove feedback, click on the REMOVE link in the feedback section of the order summary.
5. You may only remove feedback if it is 60 days or less since you left the feedback.
We appreciate your business, and again would like to extend our sincere apology. Please feel free to let us know how we may further assist you with your order.
Sincerely,
Salina
Customer Service Team
And here is the “you’re killing me part”
As if the request to remove the negative feedback were not bad enough, the very specific instructions on how to do so are just side-splitting.
(And bearing in mind that these sorts of things tend to be form letters, it does make you wonder how often Eforcity sent this out, doesn’t it?)
eriksr on May 16th, 2007
We get knocked off course sometimes, in the course of our outreach, and it’s good to have a reminder about how best to do things. So, since I don’t harp on this topic enough, here are three reminders to keep in mind next time you speak with bloggers:
- Never, ever, EVER corrupt your influencers! Don’t bribe them, and don’t pay them to write about you. If your little transaction ever becomes public, here’s what happens:
- Your influencer’s reputation will be destroyed, making them worthless in supporting your company or client
- You will be recognized as the cheating scum your customers fear/suspect you may be
- Other bloggers may shun you and your client/firm, further reducing the pool of influencers you have access to
- Don’t be an ass. I’ve seen pitches to bloggers, from some PR practitioners, that make me cringe because they are, sometimes, cajoling, demanding, aggressive, rude, etc. Folks, most bloggers aren’t businesspeople and they don’t consider themselves that way. When you approach a blogger it has to be at a one-to-one level — personal, friendly, and not expecting anything. Not even coverage.
- If you want them to write about you, you have to be ready to offer them something. Newsworthiness probably won’t cut it. And, see point number one, cash isn’t good enough. Sponsoring their site publicly
eriksr on April 6th, 2007
I recently learned about a new service that ought to be of interest to you, dear readers. It’s called PitchWire, and at its heart is a system for PR pros to reach influencers without getting under their skin. It does this by reducing the amount of irrelevant crap that shows up in their inboxes — genius! And, heads up, basic membership is free, but you can get access to the premium features free until May 1, 2007.
Nuts and Bolts: About the Service 
I like PitchWire’s philosophy behind building and sending out pitches on this service a lot. When you create a new pitch, you start out with the basics – you specify your target, then you move on to filling in important details like contact information for your spokesperson, customers, analyst/experts, the pitch category (partnerships, new products, contributed articles, etc.). I like that PitchWire starts you off here because these details can sometimes be overlooked until the last minute, causing a frantic rush of activity resulting in major headaches. Not that I know what that’s like!
THEN you move on to your pitch headline and body copy. The body copy text box limits you to 10,000 words. This is very generous, but I hope you all know enough that your pitch really shouldn’t get anywhere remotely that high. In fact, the only justification for a pitch that long would be to get the word out about the Second Coming.
After that you can add a link to a Web site, and even upload attachments up to 5MB in size. Rather than an attachment feature, I’d love to see something akin to file sharing services such as Fabrik, where you can upload your files and share them via a link.
The Best Part — For Influencers
I love, love, love the message the recipient gets. At the start of it is a very well written message explaining what PitchWire is, what the recipient is looking at, and what they can do next. PitchWire has also taken the step to automatically create an account for the recipient so they can join PitchWire. This time and effort saving idea is brilliant for those reporters, bloggers, and analysts who want to hook up.
After the message comes your pitch. Influencers can of course create their own accounts and fill in details about what beats they cover and, ultimately, what pitches they’d like to see. That ought to make life easier for everyone.
Are you still reading? Click on over to PitchWire’s site to learn more, and tell all your friends and influencers. This is an easy to use, stable service that will only improve as more people join up!
eriksr on March 16th, 2007
A colleague recently contacted me because she wanted to know if I had a 
certain high-profile blogger’s phone number — he didn’t publish it anywhere. Especially not on MediaMap, that saucy little crutch of our industry.
So I whip out my indexing software and scour my computer to see if I can possibly help…but came up blank. However, I had a feeling that this person was probably a user of Skype (software that let’s you send and receive phone calls on your computer) and I was right! After a search through Skype’s user list I found the blogger and his phone number was there for the taking.
Great. I had proven once again that I am research king. But this raised a quandary — because we found this phone number through alternate means, was it okay to call this person?
A call for opinions
I’d really love to hear what my colleagues out there think about this. If anything comes about, I’ll be sure to update everyone here. In the meantime, here’s my opinion…
…Damn the torpedoes!
As PR professionals who earn their keep by regularly picking up the phone and getting some press for their clients know, sometimes you have to stop and consider if the phone call you’re about to make is going to do some damage. Will the lucky recipient be irritated, or will they give you the 10 
seconds you need to get them interested?
Me, I’m always inclined to play it safe. Email the target twice, then follow up with a call — never mind how you got their number/IM screen-name. If you end up irritating your target, apologize and assure them you won’t bother them at this number again…and that you’ll let your colleagues know not to do the same.
eriksr on March 9th, 2007
So you want to pitch a blogger. Good for you! Blogging is growing explosively as publications are shrinking, so it is certainly wise to include them in your hemisphere.
There is only one rule when pitching bloggers, but it is a cardinal one. However, I do 
also have ten key tips to help.
The one cardinal rule every PR person must remember when pitching bloggers
They are not journalists.
This is so critically important, I need to say it again: Bloggers are NOT journalists.
They do not have journalistic ethics. They do not follow journalistic conventions. And they do not understand journalistic terminology.
For example, we all advise our clients that nothing is ever off the record, although we know some reporters will honor such things. However, tell a blogger that something is off-the-record one day and you may very well find it splashed across their blog the next. As did Edelman’s Michael Krempasky when he spoke to the popular blog Consumerist on behalf of Wal-Mart and they leaked the off-the-record information.
That journalistic shorthand you have with journalists? The one where everyone understands the rules of the game? Forget it. Spell everything out. Clearly.
Eight tips for pitching bloggers
1. Feel free to send pitches to bloggers, but remember to keep them short, keep them simple, keep them straightforward.
2. Send pitches via personal email messages – not impersonal email blasts.
3. That doesn’t mean you can’t also send a release. You can. And, at least with major bloggers who are familiar with PR, probably should. But do refer to the first tip regarding length and clarity before you do so. Remember, many bloggers have never seen a release before.
4. Feel free to add comments to a blog but, if you really want to get noticed, send the blogger your comments in an email. With luck, the blogger will use that email as a springboard for a new post. Which, in turn, will get you a lot more attention than simply being one of ten or 100 or even 1000+ comments.
5. If you do wish to post a comment, make it just that: A comment. In other words, something you say to participate in the discussion at hand. Don’t make it a pitch or self-serving diatribe or you will be flamed. Badly.
6. Know the key bloggers in your industry. Subscribe to their RSS feeds. Read their posts. And keep an eye on their comments (you can use a service such as CoComment to do just that). All of this will give you good insight into key issues and how you can best pitch them.
7. Develop relationships with the key bloggers in your industry. Your pitches will get more attention because they know you.
8. Be transparent. Good heavens, BE TRANSPARENT. Woe to any PR person who is not. Sooner or later, you will be found out and the fallout can be catastrophic.
Three more tips you already know from dealing with journalists
1. Be relevant. Don’t pitch a video game blogger food news. Don’t pitch a consumer technology blogger on a B2B application. And don’t pitch an automotive blogger about bicycles. It is a waste of their time and yours. And, worse, can open the doors for them to poke fun at you in their next post.
2. Don’t give the blogger unnecessary grief, unless they truly deserve it. Did they get it wrong? Help them by showing them how. Are they being obnoxious? Let it go: Starting a flame war never helps anyone. Are they being libelous? Call your lawyer.
3. Remember that everything you write in an email can be posted. Everything. And, in turn, can be read. By your client. Their customers. Journalists. Your mother. And so on. So don’t write anything you don’t want to be seen everywhere, by everyone. Or you’ll be sorry.
