Waaay back in December last decade, Kevin Braddock posted (and then deleted) a full list, including full names and emails, of every PR person who had sent him an irrelevant or ‘spam’ press release in 2009.

Sure enough, this post eventually got picked up on twitter by people returning from holiday in January and a full on backlash from the industry began until the list was eventually deleted on 5th Jan.  People like Will Sturgeon, Guy Clapperton and Edelman UK have all made interesting contributions to the debate that are worth a read as are many of the comments in reply to their posts.

PR Week UK have also covered the debate with their own mini-poll showing a small majority of their readers support the actions of Braddock.

And this morning Josh Halliday, another frustrated journalist, has chimed in on the PR fail with his own threat to start spamming PRs back so they get a taste of their own medicine!

The story has even been picked up in The Times.

A view from the middle

A lot has already been said about the whole episode but I thought it would be good to offer a view from somewhere in the middle of the two sides.

Obviously here at Glide it’s predominantly in-house PR teams that pay for our service, but the whole concept for what we do came out of listening to the needs of the media.  Each year, we continue to make an effort to survey them to try and understand how they work and what they like or dislike about the way the PR industry communicates with them.

What have we learnt from our own research?  One participant, Chris Lee says:  “At the end of the day, despite hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent on PR training, journo complaints are still the same as they were when I came into the industry in 1998.  It’s mostly execs that ’spam’ journalists – why? Because they’re often young, inexperienced and heavily under pressure to get results, so of COURSE they’re going to do the scattergun thing.”

What we also found is that journalists perceive the level of spam they get to be on the increase!  You might think that improvements in web and communications technology would mean that it’s easier to manage contact profiles, but it seems to be that the opposite is happening.

Two questions asked in our research are particularly relevant to this discussion:

1. What is your preferred method of receiving press release?  Please rated their usefulness.

2. How do you treat news information submitted by email

85% of journalists surveyed complain that they are getting too many irrelevant emails with 40% reaching a stage where they will only read an email if it’s from someone they already know.

You can read more about our latest research here: Glide Technologies publishes a preview of its 2010 Annual Media Research

This can make sending our mass, untargeted emails quite a risky strategy, especially if you are an agency.  An untargeted release sent to a journalist for one client may get you blacklisted, so when you want to send a more relevant release another day on behalf of another client, your email may go directly to their spam box!

Sender beware, spam at your own risk!

Stay tuned for more thoughts on who is really to blame for the deluge.

Alistair