A PR firm wrote us a letter to win our business. It was signed by their Director of Business Development.
The letter detailed the awards they’ve won, the placements they’ve achieved for their clients, and the number of clients they’ve had that have been acquired or gone public.
It sounds impressive, but it all started with “Dear <No First Name>.” Whoops!
Anton Macon
on 13 Apr 07A beauty!
ceejayoz
on 13 Apr 07So, did they get a call-back? :-p
Matt PEnnig
on 13 Apr 07[wah wah wah wah wah horn sound]
Nate Bird
on 13 Apr 07Fantastic! I worked in HR and reviewed resumes like this all the time. My favorite resumes were the ones in which they used Word’s comment system to get feedback from friends. You could go back and read all the previous edits. Very informative on their editing style – to bad it was a developer position and not an editing position.
kelly Hendricks
on 13 Apr 07My radar goes off every single time someone/some company tries to sell me something by first telling me how great THEY are (like the one above). Isn’t it more effective to do a little homework and tell your prospect “how great” they might be at what they do and give a few examples of what your homework has yielded? The scary thing is that this approach by Schwartz must be working because they have a heavy stable of clients. I guess it gives us little guys (their competition) hope!
bryan Bedell
on 13 Apr 07My form letters usually start with an insult to my manhood and/or virility, and are signed by Maldonado Gideon, who I suspect is not a real person.
That letter is good ol’ spam. On paper.
brad
on 13 Apr 07So what does it mean to “power hit your business?”
JF
on 13 Apr 07My radar goes off every single time someone/some company tries to sell me something by first telling me how great THEY are (like the one above). Isn’t it more effective to do a little homework and tell your prospect “how great” they might be at what they do and give a few examples of what your homework has yielded?
Spot on Kelly. When companies do their research it shows. When they don’t it shows. It just shows a lot worse when they don’t.
<No First Name>
on 13 Apr 07Perhaps the lamest post, ever. Mistakes happen.
You lack class in showing the name of the company too. At the very least, you could have blurred out the offending company’s name.
JF
on 13 Apr 07Mistakes do happen. We all make them. Plenty of people point ours out all day long. That’s fine too. Whether it’s a letter, a statement, a bug, a misstep, whatever: When you put it out there it’s all fair game. People recognize it as a mistake, take it for what it is, learn from it, and move on.
FYI: I didn’t include the name of the company or a link to their site in the post so it wouldn’t affect them on Google/Yahoo/MSN, etc.
BlahBlah
on 13 Apr 07I think its good accountability to blast them. Now that they’ve been put on display, I guarantee those guys won’t make that mistake again.
Mark
on 13 Apr 07I dunno – if they don’t mind a prospective customer knowing that David is not a detail person, maybe it does not matter if another 10,000 or so know.
I appreciate the obnoxiousness to show the logo.
some guy
on 13 Apr 07I can’t believe there are people criticizing Jason for revealing the details of the firm behind this. Is a form letter advertisement some kind of secret binding contract between the company that does the spamming and the people who were spammed?
Ryan
on 13 Apr 07This is a pretty egregious error for a communication firm. I think it’s totally appropriate to call them out on it. In fact, I think there’s a legitimate reason to name names—so that prospective clients might be warned about their lack of attention to detail. Wouldn’t you want to know before your PR firm sends a letter to “ Mossberg” at the Wall Street Journal?
Mark
on 13 Apr 07If you use phrases like this, you deserve to be outed…
bryan Bedell
on 13 Apr 07As far as I’m concerned, revealing the name and company is completely fair, this was unsolicited junk mail, the senseless death of a tree. If it’d contained confidential information, you’d hope the sender would be a little more careful.
It’s funny, also, that PR agencies (and such) often jump on companies BECAUSE of good PR already in place. Coudal (and from what I can see, 37S) get a deluge of cold calls/visits/letters from PR agencies and brokers and insurers and such AFTER we have an article in the press… “Hi, , Congrats on your fame, we’d like a piece of that, OK?”
JD
on 13 Apr 07JF: Yes, you didn’t include their name in your post but everyone else, who will blog about this post, will. [I am sure there will be quite a few bloggers who will talk about this.] I can easily see your post turning up in Top 10 posts when someone searches for the mentioned PR company.
JF
on 13 Apr 07Yes, you didn’t include their name in your post but everyone else, who will blog about this post, will. [I am sure there will be quite a few bloggers who will talk about this.] I can easily see your post turning up in Top 10 posts when someone searches for the mentioned PR company.
That’s up to them. That is their decision.
Justin Reese
on 13 Apr 07I would think a PR firm would relish the opportunity to spin this.
DHH
on 13 Apr 07Even if this should end up in a Google search, it’s just information. It just shows that in this instance, that firm made a funny mistake (that may or may not be indicative of their general behavior). What a potential client chooses to do with that information will be entirely up to them.
Anonymous Coward
on 13 Apr 07Maybe JF is just testing them to see how they respond. If they respond well maybe 37s will hire them. Maybe it’s a pretty clever way to put a prospective vendor to the test.
Justin Reese
on 13 Apr 07Ribbing is deserved. I work for a direct-mail marketing (read: legal spam) company, and we pay good money to make sure crap like this doesn’t happen.
(Of course, that still didn’t save us from sending a shoehorn to a legless man to advertise a product called “Footprint” with the marketing URL of “NoLongerNeeded.com”, but that’s just bad luck.)
Clearly their attention to detail is wanting, and prospective customers deserve to know that.
Kelly Hendricks
on 13 Apr 07Here’s the irony: What a great opportunity for David and Schwartz to post a reply that goes something like this:
Dear Jason: Sorry for the lame form letter. I’ve been harping for months that we need to get rid of Salesforce.com -which apparently executes simple tasks like “mail-merge” and completely mucks it up as evidence of the letter which you recieved. I’m sorry we didn’t catch this before it went it out. If we were using Highrise, I’m sure my letter would have resulted in a phone call from you inquiring about our services.
#Like I said earlier, do a little homework before you pitch someone on your services.
-Kelly
beto
on 13 Apr 07Paper spam! Never thought I’d ever see one of these. Again.
But try looking at the bright side: Now you get to know how much do they actually care about PR and doing good business.
Aaron Wallrich
on 13 Apr 07They should read “How to Win Friends and Influence people”
Dan
on 13 Apr 07@Aaron – I was thinking the same thing.
Adam
on 13 Apr 07Thats hilarious!! You never know…maybe this mistake was cleverly crafted so you would blog about it. Any publicity is good publicity right?? At least now I know what Shwartz Communications is and exactly what they do. However, I also know that have some dirty data lurking around and seem to be pretty bad at doing mail merges. It seems a lot of companies are bad at this. I hate it when I receive the same letter in the mail 5 times from the same company. Not only does it cost the company money, but it leaves serious doubt in my mind about the core services they offer.
Lindsey
on 13 Apr 07Totally fair to disclose the agency name. Someone at schwartz is still packing up their desk, but it’s all about accountability.
Keith Kamisugi
on 13 Apr 07Was it a scanned signature on the letter? I can’t see how the guy signed it and missed the merge field error.
marvinlewis
on 13 Apr 07i spend time on friday afternoon catching up on reading what i’ve neglected during the week. svn is one of my favorites.
it bummed me out a little bit to read “reining…” and “dear no first name”. it may not have been the intent, but both posts seemed to say “look at how stupid these people are”.
i hope svn continues to post content that keeps me coming back each week, instead of crushing me with brilliance.
Sam
on 14 Apr 07Pretty worrying if a public relations firm cannot get the basic tools of their trade right, and now they’ll show up on Google.
PR guy not from Schwartz
on 14 Apr 07Ok, this was a careless mistake – it wasn’t necessary to call it out in public to make them feel even more crappy. They obviously didn’t win the business and I’m sure the VP of marketing brought this debacle to their attention. I’m sure that was humiliating enough.
But still entertaining.
Craig
on 14 Apr 07This was spam on paper. Uninvited form letters are junk mail. That’s the first thing wrong, especially for a firm as prominent as they claim to be. The second thing wrong is a lack of quality assurance and human touch for new biz outreaches. The third thing is trust and care. If they are blasting new biz with malformed junk mail what are they blasting to the press?
JF
on 14 Apr 07They obviously didn’t win the business
Actually I’d still be happy to consider them for our business. I know it was just a mistake. I’m curious to see how they respond. I emailed them about this this morning. Awaiting a reply.
John
on 14 Apr 07They sound impressive. I would probably let a mistake like that slide.
I thought the letter was well written in the since that it answers very quickly the “What can you do for me?” question.
I notice so many web designers make the mistake of talking about themselves, or about standards, and technology, but never answer that question. A friend once told me “as a customer, I wear a shirt that says It’s all about me! I dont care who you are, or what you do, I want to know what you can do for me.”
To me this letter answers all of that.
Anonymous Coward
on 14 Apr 07“What a great opportunity for David and Schwartz to post a reply that goes something like this:...If we were using Highrise, I’m sure my letter would have resulted in a phone call from you inquiring about our services.”
Which would be even more funny, since Highrise doesn’t have anything to do with mass emails, mail merges, or form letters.
Judson
on 14 Apr 07In regards to the letter, I dunno. I don’t have any experience in business, but when I get a letter from a company, big or small, directly to me (as in I wrote them first or asked for a quote or something), I hate to get that pre-written feel of a letter. Jeez, your trying to get my business right? So make me feel like you actually care about your customer and stop reading off that cue card! The best thing a business can ever do is call a customer or talk to them in person. I remember buying a plan at a host once. Within a day or two, I received a call from them asking if I had any questions about if everything was working smoothly. At that time I thought it was a bit weird, but looking back I think that was one of the best customer service moves I have ever seen.
Anonymous Coward
on 14 Apr 07I don’t think they’ll be as happy to take you on as a customer as they did before.
Oh, a smart company would love the chance to prove themselves in this situation. Make it right, perform well, recover the situation and turn it all around for the positive.
shaun mclane
on 14 Apr 07you’ve got to be kidding me – I love this stuff!
Rob Goodlatte
on 14 Apr 07Because I’ve registered with my school’s career center, I get about 4 or 5 completely impersonal emails a week, and about every other week I get something with $Name in the first line like “Dear $Name”.
Chad
on 14 Apr 07I hate to say but I’ve made that mistake too. I am just glad the recipient did not blog about it. I feel bad for the guy….
Craig
on 14 Apr 07I feel bad for the guy…
You feel bad for a guy sending unsolicited junk mail form-letters with busted mail merge? Now we’re feeling bad for the spammers?
Gal Josefsberg
on 14 Apr 07Nate Bird, I had something like happen to me at a previous company. One of our sales people sent an RFP back to the customer with all the comments and edits still on it. Luckily, the customer had a sense of humor so we didn’t lose them. The salesperson lost their job though.
GJ http://www.60in3.com
Ian Waring
on 14 Apr 07One of my marketing friends once told me of a certain credit card company that wanted to target very rich existing customers with an exclusive offer. When they did the test run on the mail merge, they addressed the mail to 500 “Rich Bastard”’s at 500 mythical address.
You can probably guess the rest – they got the real 30,000 target addresses correct but forgot to change the name. All got posted, marketing guy fired 24 hours later…
Ian W.
scott
on 14 Apr 07well its a good marketing technique!
Mark
on 14 Apr 07What I would like to know is why would an merge field include ‘no’ within its parameter?
Isn’t the default usually ?
Mark
on 14 Apr 07firstname surrounded by brackets should be following ‘usually’ in my previous
Zaid
on 14 Apr 07Two partners from a local agency gave a talk at our ad club. I went upto them and asked them if they would provide some feedback to a creative concept I had for my start-up. I sent them an email with the details; the next day they provided great feedback as well as offered to meet-up and discuss more ideas for our start-up knowing fully well we have a little budget. I think it is a good contrast to this letter.
Their letter ended with compliments for our startup and its potential. No wonder we’ve our second meeting next week.
—Zaid
Anonymous Coward
on 15 Apr 07someone dugg it: http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Hillarious_Dear_No_First_Name_How_PR_Agency_Fucked_Up
Mark McClennan
on 16 Apr 07I read the posts and comments this morning. First, let me apologize. These errors normally do not happen with Schwartz, but obviously in this case, they did. Your comment hit it right on the head – mistakes do happen. We are going to take steps to be sure it does not happen again.
We appreciate you giving us the heads up prior to posting the letter on your site. A lot of folks would have broken out the flamethrower for a Schwartz BBQ. Thanks for starting the conversation.
We read all the comments to the original post. Anything we say and do is open for public discussion and this is good. Conversations that make us better at our job are always welcome – it’s how we improve.
Mark McClennan Vice President Schwartz Communications
JF
on 17 Apr 07Thanks for chiming in Mark. We appreciate it.
Carlos Barrientos
on 18 Apr 07Low IQ, or lack of attention to detail.
yari123
on 20 Apr 07THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!!!
I bet Mr. Debeck is banging his head on the keyboard. XD
And the vice presdient coming to this site and personally apologizing WOW. Great marketing! You guys are inedeed awesome with PR. XD XD XD
yari123
on 20 Apr 07“You are fired” (trump style)
This discussion is closed.