It started off inocently enough. But Beth Brody from BrodyPR made a simple mistake. She e-mailed the same pitch to a big list of contacts and included that contact list in the CC field which ignited a series of “Reply All” responses that, in tun, went to the same distribution list.
Over and over again.
It’s sort of like the media relations equivalent of being at a rock concert and the audience gets more caught up in keeping that damn beachball bouncing around in the crowd than they do in what’s going on onstage. Then, the next thing you know, the grumpy musical purists start yelling for people to sit down and the kids start complaining that nobody ever lets them have any fun anymore …
Lucky for me (I guess) that I was at a client meeting while all this was going on and I just walked in on the carnage afterward. Today there’s been a virtual pile-up on the social news media highway – and I’m viewing it as a first responder.
Maybe “pile up” isn’t nearly as accurate as “pile on” when you see how other PR professionals took advantage of Beth Brody’s lapse in judgement to cast dispersions, fluff up their own reputation and build blog traffic.
