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It’s very common practice for agencies to send out comments made by their clients that are relevant to bigger stories. I’m not going to moan about that. It’s normal PR and is attractive to lazy/busy journos who haven’t got the time (or can’t be arsed) to phone around conducting full interviews when all they really want is a quote to pad things out/stand the story up.

There’s a fairly obvious pecking order of what makes decent comment. An independent, respected, industry analyst saying something thought provoking and, if we’re being honest, negative sits at the top. And, can only really be topped if the journo is getting the comment on an exclusive basis. This is rare of course and we know exclusive comment can only really be found by conducting time-consuming interviews, so fair enough.

Somewhere near the bottom of the pecking order is a vendor who has a direct interest in the announcement, saying that they think the announcement is great news. This is common, and pedestrian PR, it’s falls into the poor pitch, no cigar category.

Recently, though, I got an email from a PR offering a bland comment on a big story. Then about ten seconds later I got an email from one of the PR’s colleagues offering exactly the same comment. I chirped up to the Necromancer and he too had the same emails from the same PRs.

They’re clearly sharing a list, probably a big list, which means that countless other tech journos will have received the same two emails. It’s careless really and it stands about as much chance of being picked up and used as a second hand condom.

I know it’s pretty minor league in the Bad PR stakes, but if you are going to send out bland comment that stands little chance of getting published, we only need to see it once.

Or maybe not at all.