Slaves to PR


And this from down under: the two gossip columnists, oops I mean journalists, from Australia’s leading national daily added to the PR profession’s holiday cheer with a little item today titled: “Tis the Reason Not to Slave in PR.”

Lest any of you think that pitching stories to journalists will (or should) fall by the wayside anytime soon, here’s a glimpse of the “favourite correspondence” from “perky” PR types written to The Age’s “Diary” columnists Suzanne Carbone and Lawrence Money (pictured):

Emails that begin with: ‘Hi, hope you’re well …’ and mention ‘touching base’, ‘giving you a heads-up, ‘running a picture and a blurb’ and ‘let me know what you think. A lass named Sarah from a music company managed the quadrella: ‘I hope you’re well. Just touching base. I was wondering if we might be able to get a mention for the show into the Diary on Monday with a picture and blurb?’ You have to admire her confidence in specifying a day. ‘Please let me know what you think.’ Sarah, in this case, no news is bad news“.

The list of PR’s many faux pas ends with the perennial favourite — the veritable #1 on the holiday hit parade:

“Now we come to something that really pops our cork: the Follow-up Phone Call (if it was a pizza, it would be called Annoyance Supreme). “Hi, this is So and So from Perky Agency, just ringing to see if you received my email.” Listen up: if the email didn’t bounce back, that means we got it. But now it’s in DELETED ITEMS. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. But we hope you’re well.”

For the record, Diarists, periods and commas typically reside inside the quotation marks. Happy holidays.