Are Search Vendors Embracing Desperation PR?
March 12, 2012
The addled goose is in recovery mode. I have been keeping my feathers calm and unruffled. I am maintaining a low profile. I have undertaken no travel for 2.5 months. I just float amidst the detritus of my pond filled with mine drainage run off. I don’t send spam. I don’t make sales calls. I don’t talk on the phone unless someone pays me. In short, I am out of gas, at the end of the trail, and ready for my goose to be cooked, but I want to express an opinion about desperation marketing as practiced by public relation professionals and PR firms’ search related clients.
A mine drainage pond. I stay here. I mind my business. I don’t spam unlike AtomicPR and Voce Communications type firms. In general, I bristle at desperation marketing, sales, and public relations.
Imagine my reaction when I get unsolicited email from a PR firm such as Porter Novelli. This Porter Novelli PR firm is my newest plight. Mercifully AtomicPR has either removed me from its spam list or figured out that I sell time just like an attorney but write about PR spam with annoying regularity.
The Porter Novelli outfit owns something call Voce Communications. Voce thinks I am a “real” journalist. I have been called many things, but “journalist” is a recent and inaccurate appellation. The only problem is that I sell time. In my opinion, “real” journalists mostly look for jobs, pretend to be experts on almost anything in the dictionary, worry about getting fired, or browse the franchise ads looking for the next Taco Bell type opportunity.
Spamming me and then reprimanding me for charging for my time are characteristics of what I call desperation marketing. In the last six months, desperation marketing is the latest accoutrement of the haute couture in PR saucisson. Deperation PR is either in vogue or a concomitant of what some describe as a “recovering economy.”
Here’s the scoop: I received an email wanting me to listen to some corporate search engine big wigs tell me about their latest and greatest software widget. The idea, even when I am paid to endure such pression de gonflage is tiring. When someone wants me to participate in a webinar, the notion is downright crazy. I usually reply, “Go away.”
To the Voce “expert” I fired off an email pointing the spammer to my cv (www.arnoldit.com/sitemap.html) and the About page of this blog. Usually the former political science major or failed middle school teacher replies, “We saw that you were a journalist in a list of bloggers.” After this lame comment, the PR Sasha or Trent stops moves on. No such luck with Voce’s laser minded desperation PR pro.
Here’s what I received:
[Bunny Rabbit] on behalf of EntropySoft. We have not yet had an opportunity to work together formally yet, but I wanted to reach out to you to see if we can arrange a conversation for you with the executives at EntropySoft – a company that I know you are familiar with given your recent conversation with BA Insights (which is an EntropySoft partner that uses our connector technology) and I know that you have mentioned EntropySoft in past articles for KMWorld.
The advantage that EntropySoft brings to the market is that through the use of its connector technology, EntropySoft can help companies make sense of unstructured data (or as you describe it – tsunami!) ensuring that IT teams can not only access or connect to just about everything worth connecting to in the KM universe, but that they can also act on it. Each EntropySoft connection is bi-directional: teams can access and act on everything. So from a SharePoint standpoint, EntropySoft’s connectors can now connect to everything in SharePoint (we just made news on this last week at the SPTechConference in San Francisco, see press release below) enabling search through FAST for SharePoint or the SharePoint Search Server Portal engine, as well as any other enterprise content management systems.
Do you have some available time on your calendar in the next week to have a phone conversation with EntropySoft? Please let me know what works for you.
Okay, I sure do know about EntropySoft. I have French clients. The two top chiens at EntropySoft know me and find me less than delectable. In the last year, the company has gunned its engine with additional financing, but for me, the outfit provides code widgets which hook one system to another. Useful stuff, but I am not going to flap my feathers in joy about this type of technology. Connectors are available from Oracle, open source, and outfits in Germany and India. Connector technology is important, but it is like many utility-centric technologies—out of sight and out of mind until the exception folder overflows. Then connectors get some attention. How often do you think about exporting an RFT 1.6 file from Framemaker? Exactly. Connectors. There but not the bell of the ball at the technology prom.
A book promoted on the Voce Communications Web site. I was not offered a “free” copy. I bet the book is for sale, just like my time. What would happen if I call the author and asked for a free copy? Hmmm.
I wrote back to the earnest person who started her email with a sentence fragment. I understand that only those unfamiliar with my method of doing business want “an opportunity to work together formally.” I am not comfortable with informal work.
The persistent Voce Communications’ professional replied, again verbatim from the email:
Again, thank you for your feedback. As I had said in my first email to you, you and I not yet had the opportunity to formally work together yet, and I acknowledged that you were already familiar with EntropySoft – though I did not realize that you had conversations with Serge and Nicolas already. My goal was simply to offer you information on the company, the latest news and offerings. While I appreciate you providing detailed guidance on your preferred methods of contact and the way you work, I think your response is a little unwarranted and over the top.
“Over the top”: I find this an interesting phrase from a practitioner of desperation PR who is trying to get me to do something which is of no interest to me for free. Just because I publish a blog with few readers, people think I am a “real” journalist. Yikes. I avoid the WD 40 type work.
I do write columns for money. Here’s how this works. I pick a topic. I do research. I contact people and ask them politely if they would consent to an interview. If they blow me off, I drop the line of inquiry. I don’t harass, follow up, or send smarmy notes about their reluctance to pay attention to me. I figure that there are six billion people in the world and one or two will answer my questions.
The idea is that I speak with a person or company on my terms. I don’t speak with people or companies on their terms. I don’t sit and let people talk * at * me. People pay me to talk * with * them. I think this is a nuance which does not map to the desperation marketers.
What really startled me was that the Voce Communications’ PR person provided me with a link to a LinkedIn profile allegedly accurate and sincere, two qualities I do not associate with public relations, sales, or marketing. Hey, I am a skeptic. Here’s snippet of the Voce PR expert’s biography:
[Name withheld] is also skilled at bringing in the “big technical guns” when they are needed, and applies them where they will be effective. That means their time is not wasted on journalists who may or may not get a story out for the company, and the result is happy colleagues as well as productive journalists who will create effective stories for the company.
Earnest? Yes. Accurate? Maybe baloney? I don’t know and I don’t care.
I know that PR people do work for clients. Clients pay PR professionals to generate visibility, buzz, and sometimes business, deals, partnerships, and invitations to speak. Clients embracing desperation PR are to blame for the surge in increasingly desperate pitches. In fact, when I detect desperation marketing, I know that something is afoot at the company. Maybe there is a cash crunch, a fly by at a private equity firm, a potential big deal that warrants some smoke, or some money-type angle?
I may have to take a quick look at EntropySoft to see what’s up. You may want to keep your eyes open as well.
What I am not comfortable with are these actions:
- Spamming me with solicitations to spend my time to get information from people whom I know well enough to send them an email or make a call.
- Assuming that a PR person will have an “opportunity” to work with me. That probably won’t happen. I have a couple of PR people on my team, but I don’t talk to them.
- Failing to read the About page of my blog. I sell time. I write for money.
- Adopting a really cheerful tone. I hate cheerful. You want cheerful talk to your mom or dad about your gold star in the fifth grade.
I know that there are list makers who troll blogs to find emails at which one can pitch stories. These emails are put into contact directories. PR firms buy these directories and the goal is to get the alleged blog writer or owner to do a story about a person, company, or product. I get it. For me, PR pitches hit me, the batter.
If an enterprise search or content processing vendor can’t make sales, hyperbole and PR won’t do the job in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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One Response to “Are Search Vendors Embracing Desperation PR?”
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thanks for sharing your PR related experiences and knowldge… this was really helpful ! =) …and a well written content also ! please keep more of such articles coming in ! =)