There are hundreds of desserts (maybe even thousands) available in Malaysia and I love most of them, especially cakes. There’s an idiom “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”. It’s so true of this instance which I am sharing now as a follow-up to my previous blog post on an awful PR person. I knew I wasn’t going to be invited to any of their client’s events from the time they received my email asking why I hadn’t been invited to their client’s Christmas event last December.
Okay, then they should bump me off their media list completely but no, this afternoon, one of the agency’s Managers sent me a press release on behalf of their client, the mall of whose events I will never get invited to. They had a CNY launch yesterday afternoon of which I am sure hundreds of media got invited. This is the event their Manager said I would be invited to when I emailed her last year in which she said “We will definitely keep you in mind for our Chinese New Year launch, which will likely take place in the first week of January”.
Of course I knew they wouldn’t keep their word as they wouldn’t know what to say to me after that nasty email from their Country Manager. I thought I wouldn’t ever hear from them again so it was a surprise when I received a press release relating to their client’s grand CNY launch which took place yesterday. I knew about the launch because the loud-mouthed blogger next to me at another mall’s CNY launch yesterday was telling another blogger about it. Don’t invite that person yet expect that person to publicise for them. I don’t know what planet they are living in really.
So I emailed their Senior Manager whom I have known for years when she was with another PR agency. We were previously on the best of terms until her boss, the Country Manager forbade her staff from contacting me.
This is my email to her:
“Not “harassing” you but I rec’d press release from xyxnch on (the mall). Do you all think I will oblige in posting for your client after your boss’ rude, insulting and altogether nasty email to me? No PR person worth their reputation shd have emailed me thus.
Also, no invitation to the (the mall) CNY launch yesterday despite bvxschy’s email last Dec that I would be invited for it.
I don’t want to receive another email from your boss on this matter so kindly do not inform her that I “harassed” you with another email. Try to understand how I feel”.
Yup, some PR agencies really want their cake and eat it too. Now who is harassing who, Country Manager? Stop sending me press releases when you have NO intention of inviting me to anything. Such bad taste to send a press release of a media event to someone you didn’t invite to said media event. It’s like sending photos of your wonderful birthday party to someone you didn’t invite. This is the worst PR agency I have ever seen. Country Manager tells me off for harassing her staff (when all I did was send emails to enquire why they left me out of the invite list), tells me her staff will not respond to me any more on this matter and to add salt to the wound, send a press release of their media event to which I wasn’t invited. They are really thick-skinned and thoughtless.
As expected, there is no reply to my email because the Senior Manager knows they have treated me unfairly and she doesn’t know how to reply despite having been in the industry almost 10 years. Well as far as I am concerned, they should save their press releases for the privileged and esteemed people they invite & leave outcasts like me out of everything they do. Sending me the press release without inviting me is like asking people to post your birthday party photos on their Facebook without inviting them to the party. This PR agency has such poor public relations skills that I wonder how they can call themselves award-winning!
