I Hate PR Parrots

In my work as a journalist, I often send out queries over various services to find sources. (In some of the work I do, this is often the best way to find companies that have had particular experiences or insights that have not already been widely quoted in the media.) Some of the answers from PR people can be useful, many are either slightly or completely off topic, but there is one type of answer that has come to drive me mad: the echo.

The PR person, wanting to demonstrate how perfect his or her client is for a story I'm doing, will take entire phrases of my query and use them as the answer. Here's an example of a query I just sent:

I'm writing about the challenges companies and law firms are finding in patenting and trademarking clean-tech businesses, including strategies and approaches IP lawyers find to be working. Please, this is about the actual IP strategy and not about a firm or company telling about how it is establishing itself in this new area of technology. Some topics might be handling the often interdisciplinary nature of clean-tech or getting inventors to think beyond their own area of specialty.

Fairly to the point, I think. Now here are snippets of some answers I received, with the only changes I make being taking out identifying information:

• Would you be interested in speaking with XX of YY who is chair of ZZ practice who can discuss with you the challenges companies and law firms are finding in patenting and trademarking clean-tech businesses, including strategies and approaches IP lawyers find to be working.
• I can offer you a XX expert today to speak about the challenges facing companies and law firms re: patenting and trademarking clean tech businesses. We will address the specifics around the actual IP strategy (and the various challenges).
• Both groups are working in conjunction with the IP and Trademark groups in this area and can discuss some of the challenges and difficulties companies face in patenting and trade marking clean-tech businesses.

That list of answers and one or two others represented maybe 40 percent of what I received within a few hours of the query being emailed.

It's not that I'm categorically adverse to having something repeated back, but I do expect additional information showing the proposed source's expertise in that area and how this person might add to the discussion. That could happen in a number of ways:

• examples where the person addressed the particular problem
• a few briefly cogent points on the topic
• specifics of background that show the necessary expertise, which means not just working in an area like law, but in the specific subset that is at issue

Simply repeating my words doesn't show that someone is listening. If anything, it's almost a guarantee that the person hasn't.

An example literally happened while I was typing this. One of the above respondents mentioned a lawyer who seemed to focus on financial deals in cleantech - certainly interesting, but not useful when I need to get into nitty gritty IP issues. I answered, noting the person's expertise seemed to be in finance, not patent work. The reply? "Would you be interested in speaking with him and one of his colleagues?"

No, I wouldn't, because you're not listening and don't care what I'm trying to do or whether you potentially make your client look like a horse's ass. If he doesn't have the background to answer the question, don't reply in the first place. If he does, then say so. But don't ignore my question and act like an incompetent. Or does it not matter because you'll bill the client for the time spent on the interaction anyway?

AMD NDA DOA

I understand why businesses want to control information, both from a competitive information view as well as marketing. But there are times that a company squeezes so tightly that it bursts a blood vessel. That has happened with chip maker AMD. Apparently AMD was holding some event in Singapore and had a non-disclosure agreement so draconian that a journalist walked out of the event and spilled the beans. According to Techarp, the agreement required the journalist to "send any stories to the vendor before his newspaper can publish it."

AMD categorically denied it, and now Techarp has spoken with the journalist who noted that the terms technically required him to send in any article in advance to AMD for approval:

The PR person even had the temerity to say that it was "just paperwork and that everyone, be it a president or prime minister, had to sign this document". That was when Don walked out.

If AMD PR people think they have done themselves any good, they are fools. They've antagonized the press in a way to make it hostile, the story has hit Slashdot.org (meaning tech people all over the world are reading it), and they haven't gotten any better control over their "story" (the PR jargon for what is going on).

There was a time when people in PR generally first spent extended periods of time as journalists. This let them understand the mindset, including how to craft stories to be of interest to the press, and avoid the major pitfalls. Perhaps corporations should stop recruiting people right out of college and look, instead, for those who have spent time in the trenches and have something more to offer than vague corporate-speak and a lot of hand-waving.

Journalists to Sue Hewlett-Packard

A number of the journalists upon whom Hewlett-Packard spied, trying to find who on the board was leaking information, are planning to sue the company. Well, there's a shocker, eh? Furthermore, CNet, at least, is considering its own options. The story says that the suit comes after "several months of negotiations with the company" on the parts of all the reporters who are known to have been the victims of surveillance. But the CNet journalists split off to take action separately, while some from BusinessWeek and the New York Times are still negotiating and the Wall Street Journal writers decided not to seek compensation. Looks as though the parties were far apart:

In an April meeting with H.P.’s outside law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius of Philadelphia, the seven journalists requested an amount equal to several million dollars each, paid to them directly with their promise that most of the money, though not all, would be donated to charity. Hewlett-Packard’s offer was closer to $10,000 per reporter, roughly enough to cover the reporters’ legal bills, according to several people involved in the talks.

So not only did HP spy on reporters - and on its own board members - but it's trying to get off cheaply? Well, not counting the $14.5 million it agreed to settle a lawsuit from the California attorney general.

How incredibly dense a move. Let's say that it spent the several million and got everyone off its back. Would that really have been that much more expensive than antagonizing journalists everywhere and keeping its name in the press in such a negative way? Once again we see American business deciding to be penny wise and pound foolish.