Paranoid protectionists Prima Donnas of the press plead for protection
We recently sent out about a zillion invites to the press to invite them to our luncheon in LA during Siggraph.
Aside from finding out who’s not working (out of the office till…) and who’s not employed (permanent failure party does not exist) we also learned that there’s a whole bunch of press people who just can’t cope with email, especially from strangers (given such an attitude, I would guess their friends list is small) These timid and violated poor souls seek refuse from the onslaught of email from strangers offering millions from Nigeria, sex forever, and new hair in places you didn’t know you had, and have put a firewall up to block the spam that any semi intelligent Outlook user can do with his or her Junk Mail function.
Their robots says things like:
* I apologize for this automatic reply to your email. To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand. This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (TMDA).
* Your message attached below is being held because the address
has not been verified. To release your message for delivery, please send an empty message to the following address, or use your mailer’s “Reply” feature.
* I’m protecting myself from receiving junk mail. Since I have a simple email address, the spammers have flooded my mail box - I need to invoke this challenge in order to read messages from real people (like yourself) that need to communicate with me.
I wonder if they have a cutout service that goes through their newspapers and magazines removing all the unwanted ads, and another robot that operates the TiVo so they never have to watch an unwanted, and certainly unrequested ad. Then there’s the junk mail robot that carefully and cleverly filters all their post mail, strangely and ironically never having anything left – gee, no birthday card from mom again this year.
Such a clean, pristine and unmolested life they lead, one of their robots runs ahead and rips down all billboards, ads stuck on the side of telephone poles, and each and every banner in front of every shop – such offense shall not invade the virgin minds of our pampered press corps.
I laugh at them as I cash the checks from the Nigerian bank of the West Nile, and go off to Scotland to collect my lottery winnings, I actually don’t even have time for the $1,000 gift card at BestBuy someone sent me, and as for never being incapable of sex any time anywhere, well, what can I say, I grin a lot now. The hair thing is a bit annoying, what with a trip to the barber every other day, but with all the money I have coming in from the Bahamas, it hardly matters. And the fact that I no longer have to work for living since I took up that offer from Sam Smaltz to be my own boss, just makes my life as a real estate magnate all the more sweet. Of course I am annoyed with the offers to refinance my credit cards, house, and car, since I’ve long ago paid them off with the money that was left to me by an uncle I didn’t know I had in Egypt.
Alas, I feel sorry for the poor protected and persecuted press that deny themselves this richness and wealth, and I’ve tried to do something about it, but every time I send them a few hundred thousand dollars it comes back.
It is interesting Jon that you posted your very mild rant on 07.09 and there hasn’t been one response or counter from PR people (present company included). It tells you something of the state of the PR industry when “our” people can’t read and don’t make adequate use of the Internet as a true two-way communications vehicle.
It reminds us of last year when Chris Anderson (editor in chief of Wired magazine and the person who first coined the Long Tail concept) publicly blackballed PR people—and publicly listed their email addresses for their blind shotgunning of emails. The uproar from his ridiculing these people in public led to responses—bitching and complaining about the horrible humiliation—from more than 200 PR people.
We have never determined what the real issue of screening calls was all about. We regularly get about 350 emails daily. More than half are from banks, eBay, Amazon, others wanting me to update or verify my account information or from people wishing to share huge sums of money with us.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to pick these out and delete them. Then it takes very little time to determine which are really important and need immediate action—client product, review assistance or technical information. If it is something someone else in the organization can handle in a routine manner we forward it. If it requires indepth assistance we hold the email until later in the day when things are quieter. If it requires an answer—yes we’ll attend, can’t make it, sorry not interested—we respond accordingly. We don’t leave people hanging. And we don’t leave in the evening until our inbox is EMPTY.
It simply isn’t that big of a deal to do your job and at times that will include taking irrate calls from a client’s customer who is having problems and/or issues—unable to get through to tech support, doesn’t understand them, doesn’t believe the answer was correct or simply wants someone to complain to…that’s part of the job right?
We don’t have filters. Not on our email and not on our phones. People want to talk with us they get passed through if we’re available. If they want to do a survey, want us to renew our subscription, want to discuss client’s policies/programs we ask them to send us an ...email. And…it gets thru and gets an answer.
That’s the job we signed on for…didn’t they? Jeezz get a new job!!!!! Andy