The Good, The Bad, The Stupid - PR Woes

What's wrong with public relations industry? Will they let just anyone work in the biz?

I deal with so many great PR reps, some true pro’s, but there are some of them out there that baffle me. Maybe I shouldn’t rant on them, maybe I should talk to whomever hired them.

Almost once a week I receive an email with a press release attached in a word document. I just won't read it. With all the macro viruses out there it’s just not worth it. DELETE.

I regularly get giant emails from people I don’t know. Why am I receiving 8MB file attachments for an engine part? I don't mind emails that are under 100k but where do these agencies find the idiots that manage to attach 8mb and send it to someone they don't know. DELETE.

If you want us to review your hotel, then you’ll have to cover the costs of our writers to conduct a site visit. That includes airfare, accommodations and some meals. We get nearly 10 trip offers a week and not enough space to publish all of them. We’ll pick the ones that fit into our editorial guidelines and that will cost us the least. After all, we’re still a business.

Respect goes a long way with me, I don't pretend to be the king of the world, but when I travel I expect that the host understands that each page of RICH GUY costs $16k. An article can run 3 - 4 pages and provides them with a significant value. Each page that is taken by editorial is a page that can't be sold as an ad. So don’t nag about a penny here or there. Cheapskates get axed.

Talk fast. If you hear me talking fast, talk at my speed because I’m busy. Every day I have my phones ringing non-stop and I try to take every call that comes in. I hate returning calls but I do it (make sure you leave your email address when you call). So please, be respectful, talk at my speed.

Also, I’m getting really sick of the pot head type of phone calls I receive from people that start off with “uhhh hi”. No conversation on the planet should start with “uhhh” simply because people that start a conversation that way instantly sound stupid and usually talk slow. I lose interest right away and will probably ask them to email me.

In fact, I do prefer email.

Here’s what you should do if you want to pitch me a product. EMAIL FIRST. Send me an email without pictures or if you must, a small picture, if I’m interested I’ll email you back. It’s ok to follow up ONCE. If you keep calling me every two days or every week, I’ll ignore you and your product. It’s happened before, I’ve yanked editorial at the last minute because of a rep nagging me about it.

Mind you, if you email and I don't respond, it's ok to call me and ask if I got the email. That's just common sense, just make sure you talk fast when you do.

There are some brilliant agencies out there that I would do work with at the drop of a hat. I trust their opinions and know that they’re dealing with a high quality of client. The rep is such an important part of the business that I usually won’t put myself or any of my writers in a situation with a poor agent.

I recently went to Cabo. After a missed connection and missed flights, US Customs issues etc.. I arrived a day late. I went to the mall where I thought everyone would be and sure enough it seemed as though the entire town was there. I couldn't tell heads from tails when all of a sudden I heard my name “Bassam over here!”. Jason the PR Ninja (that's him pictured above) had printed out my picture and memorized what I looked like. Good job on his part because I had no idea what HE looked like. I could’ve been lost in Cabo.

Sometimes I run into PR people that are just cool. You know who you are, because I've told you. Other times unfortunately, poor PR reps have their emails go directly into the delete folder.

Spammers are Human too...

This past Thursday and Friday I received less spam than any other day of the year. In fact I received only 27 pieces of spam on both days whereas I generally received 80 to 100 per day across all my email addresses. Not only was spam down but my entire receipt of emails across the system was lower. How could this be? Was my mail server rejecting emails? Do I have a faulty mail system? I started to get paranoid a bit but thankfully a friend of mine reminded me it was American thanksgiving.

It seems that the most hated segment of the internet population aren’t Canadians or offshore countries after all, because it turns out that Spammers have families and cultural obligations that are centered around the American holidays. I’m sure that after a long day of dealing with family and eating turkey they don’t have the energy to hit the send button.

So to all my American readers, reach out and hug a spammer! After all, they’re human too!

Most Expensive Coke I ever drank!

I once heard a story from one of my readers talking about how he went to Switzerland on business trip. Eager to please his clients, he asked them to suggest the nicest restaurant for them to eat that evening. They went to a quaint dining room on the side of a mountain overlooking the Alps; they were the only people there as the restaurant only served one group per evening. The chef greeted the five men individually then the waiters (there were 5 of them) made conversation with the men in order to get a better understanding of what they wanted to eat and how they liked their meal prepared. There wasn’t a menu, these men could order anything under the sun and they did. One ordered venison another ordered salmon, someone else had beef all of course with truffles, caviar and wine. Each course came with some of the most incredible presentations of food the men had ever seen. They ate and drank for 7 hours having one of the best experiences of their lives, eventually as all good things, the evening came to an end. As the story goes, my reader received the bill for the night of drinking and dining to the sum of CHF 110,000 ! Roughly $95,000!! On the bill there was bank wiring instructions as well, and he had to make the phone call to his banker to make the deposit.

For the past 3 years since I heard this story I dismissed it as a hoax. I thought this guy was trying to show off a bit, but tonight I couldn’t help but think of this story. On this fine evening I was in fact at a fantastic restaurant in the fantastic Hotel Principe Leopoldo, on the side of the Swiss Alps, overlooking the town of Lugano eating venison and having a wonderful time.

After dinner my hosts retired while I decided to enjoy a cigar at the bar. It was at this bar, while smoking a cigar and sipping on a Diet Coke (yep, I love cola and a cigar) that I came to realize that I drank the most expensive diet coke of my life. Had I known that it would be so expensive I would have savoured it more than I did, as it was merely a compliment to a tasty Montecristo cigar. The price of the 250ml bottle Diet Coke was $11 equating to $44 a litre.

Oh, and there weren’t any free refills either…

Here's the website to the hotel that I was at: http://www.leopoldohotel.com/

In Switzerland!

Two espressos and a cup of coffee and I’m still dozing off. A few hours ago I was sitting in the Lufthansa Star Alliance Lounge at Zurich airport, waiting for my flight to small town of Lugano which borders Italy. There was a coffee machine in that lounge and I took full advantage of it! The red eye flight from Montreal was quite comfortable. I had slim hopes of getting some sleep on the Swiss plane but the in-flight entertainment and fantastic meals kept me up. Yes, you guess it, I had the beef tenderloin!

I have a rule about time zones: they don’t exist. I go to bed at the exact same time that I would go to bed if I were at home. This time however, the rules don’t apply, I’m damn tired and a nap is the only solution!

Before I head to bed, here are some pictures I took of Lugano, the lounge and the Alps.

If you want a postcard from Switzerland, please email me your address and I will do my best to send one: blog@richguy.com

Giant planes on the beach!

When I was 17 there was a picture of an Air France 747 on the back of the Flying Club’s door where I learned to fly. The jumbo jet was only a few feet off the ground directly over a beach. I thought it was a fake, I couldn’t believe that someone would land such massive aircraft so close to the beach. I also couldn’t find anyone to verify the picture as real, so I always dismissed it as a hoax, until I saw more pictures on the internet of the approach to SXM. With the short runway, it makes for some spectacular visuals of aircraft landing. I thought to myself at the time that I had to get to St. Maarten and experience this for myself.

Well, here I am in St. Maarten, my new friend and member from the tourism office William Bell drove me to Maho Beach to watch the planes land. Air France doesn’t fly 747’s there anymore, but I was able to see a spectacular approach of one of their A340.



It’s so amazing to see such a giant aircraft landing and I never cease to think of how fortunate we are to live in such an age where air travel is prevalent. You can be in your home for breakfast and in a different land for dinner.

Speaking of dinner, this is exactly what I have to do right now…EAT!!

Take Care!