Our "horrendous tone"
Reader Linda C. Gross did not like our article one bit.

Subject: Horrendous Tone in eZine article "10 bonehead mistakes PR people make . . ."

Were you having a particularly bad day when you wrote this article or is this the general tone of your commentary?

One of my clients forwarded me your eZine to evaluate. Their 500+ employee company is switching to Outlook soon. He wants my recommendation to promote your 'zine as an additional source of information to their employees.

Is this article fairly indicative of your level of writing? One of my client's subsidiary companies is a PR firm and this would be extremely offensive to them. It certainly was to me.

Comments?

Linda C. Gross,
Impact Communications

You know we couldn't resist answering this one!

Linda asks if this article is indicative of our writing. Yes, yes it is. Insightful (and sometimes, apparently, inciteful), high-value, no-holds-barred writing is one of the reasons we have so many readers.

It's also indicative of the hundreds of poor press releases we get each day. Linda, if you're unable to see that, perhaps you doth protest too much. I'd think that as a PR person, your first contact with the editor of a publication wouldn't be argumentative. It certainly wouldn't help you promote your client to said editor.

As for "extremely offensive", there's a huge difference between real offenses and explaining to our friends in the PR community why some of their communications get ignored. Was it offensive to suggest that PR folks remember to use subjects, don't include potentially virus-infected attachments, and conduct their communications in a way that'll get their clients what they need?

I'm "offended" (ok, mostly I'm just very amused) that Linda's willing to put her desire to perpetuate poor practice before her clients' needs and interests. The first mistake her client made was asking a PR firm for advice on what technical resources to recommend to their employees. They should be asking their IT manager, who, presumably, has a clue about the issues involved in migrating to Outlook. If their IT manager doesn't have any Outlook experience, there are many highly skilled Outlook and Exchange professionals out there who can help them out. That's what she should recommend to her client.

Linda, if you're concerned that your client's PR subsidiary might actually learn how to be successful in email PR from, oh, perhaps the most qualified source on the topic, then you're missing the point. It's fine with me, though, whatever you do. OutlookPower has more readers yearly than Yoga Magazine, Psychology Today, Mother Jones, and even the Harvard Business Review, so we're not going to miss a few hundred readers one way or the other. And, of course Linda, your client's employees will find us. They always do.

The real question, I guess, is whether we'll want to give Linda's clients coverage when their representative so clearly doesn't have their best interests at heart. Yeah, we'll cover them. It's not their fault that their PR agent needs to get her priorities in order.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's author of Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours (Sam's, 2003) and coauthor of OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.