PR is a funny profession. Essentially, I am in sales - and probably, if I sat down and tried to decide on the worst possible job for me, it would be sales - but none the less, that is what I do. I knock on doors and often have them shut in my face. Journalist are NOTORIOUSLY pissy about PR flacks, 'I get too many pitches, I get too many emails, I am too busy to take your call, etc.'.
For the most part, I sympathize. I, too, get a lot of email. I, too, hate it when my phone rings with unwanted, or god forbid, sales, calls. I don't want to hear about things I don't care about and I certainly don't want to hear about things that do not pertain to me or my job. But for the most part, I believe in the treat people the way you want to be treated rule and I reserve my crotchety attitude for my friends and husband - they love me regardless - and present a generally genteel/pleasing attitude to strangers/colleagues/sales people/etc.
So if a journalist I am pitching wants to ignore me, totally fine. I can take a hint and, for the most part, I won't pester. If someone doesn't have time for my call or to respond to my email, I am okay with that...just remember I am here if you need me. And boy, if they need me, I better come a running. Which is totally fine. That is, after all, my job. And there are very few things as satisfying to me as getting the right information to the right person. Not spin, not messaging or an 'angle' - just delivering the facts and educating an interested party.
But the new trend I am seeing, is to to not only hate the messenger, but to now say that PR is useless or that PR is the problem. While both of those examples are Scoble, he certainly isn't the only offender. I don't pitch Scoble much because he wouldn't be interested in the majority of my clients, so I don't bother him. But I take offense for those PR flacks that are pitching him. I like to think, with my rose colored glasses on, that the majority of the folks pitching him sincerely think he would be interested and/or sincerely believe in their client and the product they are pitching.
But even if they aren't good at their jobs and they are just blanketing pitches out and they don't have a great product or a great story, even if they are annoying to the extreme - I am quite sure that if Scoble needed anything from any of them, they would bend over backwards to make it happen.
It is like the popular football player and the geeky nerd. Football player is 'too cool for this and that', completely hating on the geeky nerd, dissing his style, music, and social activities - until he needs his homework done.
I am never going to escape high school. sigh.
(Please do not think the irony of Scoble being the football player in my little 'play' is lost on me - it is not at all)
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