This exchange between the Director of Public Relations of Petland and an animal rights protestor has me wondering when snark became acceptable in public relations (or has it always been?). Is it really acceptable to be rude to people who criticize you? Especially what seems like legitimate criticism (to me)? Can’t you acknowledge a mistake (or a difference of opinion), correct it, and move on?
A related anecdote: In October, I wrote briefly about alleged discrimination in diamond sales involving a major jewelry chain and female sales associates, who were reportedly paid less and promoted less often. Since then, I’ve had comments on the blog just about weekly from the major chain jewelry store (I see their ip addresses) calling me dumb, a poor researcher, and suggesting that I don’t know all the facts. Now I’m sure I don’t know all the facts. I know only what was in the articles here and here and here. But the entire matter has left me wondering about strategy. Is it really in your best interest if you’re accused of discriminating against women to seek out a woman that writes (briefly!) about your company and insult them? Granted, it’s not the same as the Director of Public Relations being snarky, but what’s the strategy here? I’m not going to let the comments post to that piece. Period. And my opinion of the company has certainly not increased.
January 24th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Wow. Amazing - really poor PR.
January 25th, 2009 at 7:26 am
And it’s not like you really commented on anything, just provided a paragraph about it from the article, and mentioned what stores are in the chain.
Don’t people have better things to do with their time? Do they sit there and google their company name compulsively?
Anyway, yeah I’m sometimes amazed at the snarky responses from PR. I am very much NOT in favor of the common translation of “the customer is always right” (which really means, the customer is always right about knowing what they want and we should make every effort to provide it) but it seems like you shouldn’t go out of your way to alienate the customer.
January 25th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Do you both think this is part of a larger trend?
In the past, I’ve had PR representatives from Southwest and the LA firefighters leave messages when I wrote about their organizations in the same fashion, but the messages were much less snarky.