Gawker Fries Weber Shandwick Flack
Gawker decided to flash-fry a poor little PR guy from Weber Shandwick’s Dallas office today. The flack was pitching KFC.
Quoth Gawker:
While we understand that junior-level PR people have to send out releases to whole big lists of media, and so we try to simply ignore them — rather than get mad at them, or taunt them — when they send us silly, irrelevant things like news about giveaway offers by national fast-food chains, sometimes that becomes impossible.
Gawker then names the flack, publishes his e-mail thread, and labels him “Moron Publicist of the Month.”
Ouch.
Yo, PR firms (and clients): don’t say we haven’t warned you.
Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Weber Shandwick, Gawker
Even if he did get slammed by Gawker, so what, he still got KFC in the spotlight.
I understand that PRlings will make faux pas here and there but the best thing to do is learn from it. He has persistance thats for sure.
I don’t believe in that school of PR; it’s not relationship-oriented. Journalists eventually stop answering the phone for certain flacks and certain companies that use the “quantity” approach.
Poor kid. I am no fan of the BS exclusive club of Gawker or Gawker, and I am less a fan of them mocking poor kids like that.
But, like one of the commenter’s said, he likely was told to go with the list and pitched.
Hmm, time to bring up my session at BlogOn again, just to drive the point home.