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Why AtomicPR Sucks Ass. And How They are Breaking the Law, Too.
A little while ago, I blogged about how some public relations firms were spamming me. In short, I was getting tired of random PR firms sending me emails about stuff that I didn’t care about and thus further cluttering up my inbox. 
These random carpet bombing strategies were both abusive and stupid – some poor client is paying their requisite $10-15k a month for the PR firm to make a bad impression on me. In fact, I alerted a VC friend of mine that one of the firms was carpet bombing about his recent financings and he was none too happy.
One PR firm, in particular has really taken this to a new level: Atomic PR.
The folks seriously suck ass. Not only do they carpet bomb me, but every time I politely ask them to take me off the list of the stupid stuff they send me, they either one: don’t reply, or two: reply that they will, but never do. And then I get an email from some new “bright and shining face” informing me of some “exciting news” that I couldn’t care less about.
I tried to warn them, but apparently they didn’t believe me when I said that I would call them out.
So, I officially start my boycott today, of AtomicPR until they vow to change their ways. Don’t hire them. And PLEASE link, share and retweet this post, so that when folks search for “AtomicPR,” the Google gods rank this post highly.
And Atomic guys – if you don’t stop, the next step is to report you to the appropriate government authorities since you don’t really allow anyone to opt out of their communications.
If anyone has a lot of time on their hands and wants to email my friends at Atomic PR, here are their email addresses:
Hmm – crowdscathing
I wonder how long it will take before the CEO of Atomic PR to post a comment to this blog post
"I wonder how long it will take before the CEO of Atomic PR to post a comment to this blog post
"
Apparently not quickly enough
Yes, definitely not.
Remind me not to piss you off
Amusingly, Atomic PR lists EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) as one of their clients. I wonder how much the EFF would agree about this practice
Would never happen. J
I am sure the folks at EFF would not like this. Funny, I didn’t no this. Thanks for the knowledge.
I feel your pain, but spam is a fact of life these days, isn't it? Rather than posting a vindictive diatribe that includes personal email addresses and a headline with the words "sucks ass" it it, all you have to do it tweak your spam filters to completely avoid the offending parties from now until you are too old and frail to boot up your computer. You'd be down two blog posts but it would probably be worth the sacrifice.
I have an allergy to tweaking my filters. Postini does a GREAT job for me. I don’t want to start messing with that and it’s the law that they should remove you from email lists. This has been going on over a year now and I’ve been polite and kind. I even told them I was going to blog if they kept doing it. So, they kept doing it. So instead of being angry anymore, I figured that I’d at least have some fun with it.
Rick, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Jason, glad we're friends!
And don't forget Tell All Your Friends PR. They are the king spammers in the music industry and love approving press passes and photo passes and then not honoring them upon arrival to the show/festival. Not to mention they have horrible grammar and spelling. Yeah, your lame lingo "ain't" cute.
Jason – couldn't agree more, you want to try being an industry blogger – the PR tsunami really kicks in then – http://www.cloudave.com/link/pr-101-and-how-not-t...
Thanks for the post, and sorry you couldn't join me fore the "law and the clouds" discussion last week at gluecon
Fair enough. I work for a PR agency and ironically – or perhaps fittingly – I also get spanned by flacks because I blog, too. Most of the PR spam I receive does not include an opt-out, and as you point out the senders are therefore violating federal law. It would be interesting to survey PR agencies across the country to see how many of them are aware of the law and more important, how many actually abide by it. My suspicion is that the percentages would be shockingly low.
Hey Jason – do an ARP on their mail server & then submit it to a few RTBL servers. Problem solved for you & many others.
Yes, but the last thing unwanted to hear from are their lawyers.
———————-
Jason Mendelson
Sent from my iPhone
- please forgive iTypos.
The Real Time Black List servers are meant to stop exactly this type of email. AT&T & Qwest use 'em too.
Sigh.
As someone who has a dual career as a tech PR person and professional blogger, I know this problem from both sides. In my agency life, I worked with clients who demanded to know how many times a day/week you had nagged Reporter X. Seriously, they wanted to see high numbers there no matter how much I explained that it would really be best to read what they've written in the last six months and then craft a highly-targeted pitch to ONE, maybe two, reporters. Alas, it never caught on. Happy to be on my own now, where I can do things my way.
As a blogger, I get pitched approx. 5x a day for things that have nothing to do with what I write about – animals and wildlife concerns. (I wish I had a dime for every mommy blogger pitch I got.) I used to fire off angry retorts and engage the person behind the message but now I just delete them.
Sigh.
Anyway, I'm glad you called 'em out. Shame helps.
Ahh, but how would one survey every PR firm? It's not like someone opting to do PR is mandated to pay a PR fee or join a PR trade group.
Hi Jason,
I'm sorry that this has been your experience; we don’t encourage or condone ‘carpet bombing’ by any of our teams. Your frustration highlights the need for a central opt-out list, which we’ll have up and running early next week.
Aside from taking more definitive steps to keep Atomic people from pestering you, part of the reason that you may be receiving contact from other PR firms about VC-related news is that you have a profile as a blogger covering venture capital in the Cision database; an industry standard database that communications professionals use in an attempt to target content and contact with journalists and bloggers that have stated interests in specific topics.
I've posted a few additional thoughts on our blog http://www.atomicpr.com/blog/are-pr-firms-the-new... including contact info and an instructable for removing profiles from Cision, for anyone interested.
I'll get in touch shortly.
Thanks for your feedback, and again, sorry for the frustration.
Andy Getsey
Co-founder & CEO
Atomic PR
Jason, I would be happy to send them an email telling them to stop spamming you, but I would be afraid they would add me to their spam engine!
Too late. I just sent your email.
———————-
Jason Mendelson
Sent from my iPhone
- please forgive iTypos.
I came upon this blog, wish I hadn't. I'll never get those 5 minutes of my life back reading this dribble. As a former drummer, software engineer, lawyer, I'd expect proper grammar, not to mention the simple ability to hit the delete button for any email he wishes to ignore. There's even a "spam" button for most email providers that can be pressed to avoid receiving future emails from a domain. A "software engineer" doesn't know about this? Really? I really have to question the agenda here. A blog about receiving spam? There's far too much bitterness within this blog for it to be simply about spam.
Yes, I was bummed that I missed the panel. Something got lost in translation and no one told me that I was on the panel and I had to leave out of town for a board meeting.
Love your post.
Look on the bright side, you are only down net 4 minutes, b/c I had to spend a minute to read and respond to your post. You should expect proper grammar when you read the newspaper or a book. You shouldn’t from someone who has two jobs that didn’t require writing and what good grammar I had was destroyed as a lawyer. I know all about spam buttons – not the issue. It’s against the law and it’s wasting client’s money and brand value. Your agenda is the only one that should be questioned.
Whether or not you encourage or condone, I can’t say. What I can say is that your firm sends me an exponential amount of emails than other firms and that you don’t allow people to unsubscribe. I don’t cover VC. I blog about stuff that I find interesting. To think that I’m a reporter or to think that I’m going to want to speak to your team members and “cover” you send me is absurd. I’m just a dude in Boulder who is a VC. The database is wrong.
I think it’s great that you are creating an opt out list. This will help all of us, in that you’ll have a better list and I won’t receive emails that I don’t need.
I appreciate your candor and thank you for doing the right thing.
Happy to!
"Your agenda is the only one that should be questioned."
Yep: http://www.snap-pr.com/node/2
Awesome John. I always said that I stayed on Twitter for your tweets and now I get to add commenting to the list, too.
Well, next week you'll get to see me fly United again for the first time in about a billion years… that should be hilarious for everyone. Except me, of course.
(construction at SJC has closed the whole section of gates that Frontier used, so I'm forced to use United for this trip)
Bah hah hah hah!
Andy – I get a massive amount of email from your team also and have had exactly the same problem Jason reports. I just sent a note per your suggestion to Cision (FYI – I've NEVER confirmed anything to them to get on their list – so the PR industry should call them out as well) and received the following email response:
Thank you for sending your media update request to Cision's research department. The feedback and information received from our clients is one of the most valuable resources Cision has in maintaining and improving our database.
Our research team will review your request and once the information is verified, the new or updated information will be reflected in the database within 72 hours.
Unfortunately we cannot respond individually to each request we receive, however if we are unable to process your update or need additional information, we will contact you.
Please feel free to call or write us with any further questions you might have, at 1-800-972-9252 or changes.us@cision.com.
We'll see what happens.
I feel your pain, but spam is a fact of life these days, isn’t it? Rather than posting a vindictive diatribe that includes personal email addresses and a headline with the words “sucks ass” it it, all you have to do it tweak your spam filters to completely avoid the offending parties from now until you are too old and frail to boot up your computer. You’d be down two blog posts but it would probably be worth the sacrifice.
We have laws that govern this. It’s not my responsibility to change my behavior after trying for over a year to get this company to do the right thing.
Let's be honest . . . anyone who operates like this isn't really a PR Firm. Writing this post is like blogging about 7 Eleven not carrying fresh avocados and dry aged Fillet Mignon next to the energy drinks. The fact is, anyone can put the letters "PR" at the end of their company name and spam people. This isn't news, or even mildly entertaining.
I agree with the previous poster. You're either bored, or have an axe to grind with these guys.
Not sure if I understand this. In one respect you seem to agree with me that folks who act like this aren’t PR firms, but they are. As for my axe – I just like people to take me off lists. And the previous poster “forgot” to mention that she’s a PR hack herself, so she has zero credibility. Your 7 Eleven analogy makes zero sense.
As a PR practitioner myself, I cringe at fellow practitioners being outed. But I ask Jason to consider that some of the people sending him email may just be taking their direction from a higher authority and it is not their fault. I would hesitate to shoot down their budding careers. Better to out the top guy, who's responsible for directing his people. To those who tell Jason just to block the email, why should the burden be on him? His point is that this PR firm is committing the mortal sin of recklessly sending out emails without properly doing what they are paid to do. The burden is on them to remove non-relevant contacts.
And what is new information to me is that there was this database called Cision which PR folks were relying on that seems like it was way off base. I have a ton of sympathy for you folks on this one. What I had no sympathy for was 1 year of me trying to get off the mailing list. Any idea how many other databases there are like this out there and what type of money they are making? Seems like a racket.
As a PR person with extensive media relations experience this makes me queasy. I would absolutely want to crawl under my desk if I got called out like this, so my heart goes out to Atomic PR. Unfortunately, this type of mass-spam PR has gone on too long to blame it on a Cision glitch. Here's the two-part remedy:
1. Know your targets & I mean actually KNOW them.
2. Stop letting the 'select-all' happy interns manage media lists.
Every contact should be verified (defended, explained) by a senior manager before any releases are sent. If you can't explain to your boss why you know for sure that person wants to hear from you, then you better not send anything. Relationships first, releases second. (Yes, I made that up.)
Jason, I am glad you called them out. PR firms should be held accountable. If it's ever my company, please just shoot me because it means I have stopped actually caring about my job and started hiding behind generic lists. Until then, I promise you won't be getting any random releases.
~ Jules Zunich
Jason ~ There are several and they run into the thousands for annual subscriptions. In the old days, there was a book published annually with every publication and the contacts for each dept. That's how old ladies like me spent their time (thumbing through the books – like a set of encyclopedias – checking names and addresses). Technology brought dozens of online options and the old fashioned "get to know the reporter" approach was lost. This is not a new complaint and it won't stop until PR firms build relationship building into their plans. I learned the old fashioned way, so it makes me nuts that people think technology can replace actual knowledge.
Interesting. Thanks. Seems like an accident waiting to happen with these databases.
Sent from my iPad
As a blogger, I'm now receiving several press releases a day from PR agencies who have no clue what I specialize in. I asked one to remove me from their list, but to this day I still receive releases from them. I wrote http://www.pressreleasesarenotaprstrategy.com to highlight this "carpet bombing" strategy that too many companies and PR specialists employ…some may view your post as too bitter or nasty, but now that I'm on the receiving end of misdirected emails, I completely empathize…
It is a poor carpenter that blames his tools. Sorry, not buying the "your name is in Csion" thought. I come from an agency background, so I know all the reasons for why these things happen. But in the end they really shouldn't happen. Just keep your lists clean and push back on the client when they need to know "how many times did you call".
And this happens I would say with a majority of the agencies out there. Really simple answer: If you can't individualize each email or call, then don't send it to people you can't specifically address. Use proper tagging of the news to get it into the search engines and social media channels people read. Or better yet, pick up the phone and pitch. Email pitching alone is for cowards!
Finally, this wouldn't happen if more agencies spent more time on training junior PR folks on the fine art of pitching. A little training goes a long way (and clients, ask how many accounts your team members are on. If it is 5 or more, I would be a bit worried.)
FUCK YOU for calling people out. Air your business but don't be a dick.
What if those people were to lose their job over your goddamn ranting because you can't stand a little spam in your life even though you get it everyday. Spam is a fact of modern life. These people were just doing their job. Fault the company not the people.
And opt out of Cision if you don't want to be included.
DICK.
If you read my post I tried to opt out.
You need some counselling. Anger mangement would help. Or maybe not.
———————-
Jason Mendelson
Sent from my iPhone
- please forgive iTypos.
Would you care if any of those professionals you called out lost their jobs? I would suggest removing their emails as I am sure they are inundated with unwanted mail, indirectly perpetrated by you – exactly what you are speaking out against.
You selfish ninny.
I would care if they lost their jobs. That would suck. But I spent a year emailing them asking nicely to remove me.
And no, they aren’t getting emails. I checked.
And with all due respect, if you were really you, you are one of my favorite goalies, but I can’t actually believe you speak this way. Sorry that we stole Mike Babcock away from you.
I usually speak with a Swiss accent.
Good ol' Babcock. I wasn't around when Babby was here, though.
Since we're talking about old stuff:
The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings are in Toronto playing a close game; tied 1 – 1 late in the third period.
Just before a face-off Tie Domi lines up next to Chris Chelios and says, "Hey Chelios, your an American, and playing hockey in Canada right?"
Chris Chelios swells out his chest and says, "Damn right I am, and proud of it."
Tie Domi smiles and quips, " Then what are you in the bathroom?"
Chelios looks at Domi and appearing confused he asks, "What?"
To which Domi laughs and responds, "European."
As a PR person, I've definitely sent pitches that weren't as targeted as they should have been. It happens, even though it shouldn't. But it's only to your own detriment, as you're wasting billable time that could be spent better than using a spray-and-pray approach. But if someone explicitly asks you to be removed, especially a blogger, and you don't. Well…you're taking a lot of risk.
Also, Cision is an incredibly valuable tell but it is just a jumping off point. No matter what level I was at agency, I tried to do my own media lists. It's very time consuming but investing the time to do the research in the beginning will pay off over time.
Also, a problem with working agency is the intense focus on results. My first agency head would make us call people in an e-mail age, and if we hadn't reached them live, she would insist we'd dial out to get an operator to track them down. You can imagine the effectiveness of that technique. I think the agency model of PR is breaking similar to how traditional law firms aren't evolving with the change.
Okay, that’s really good. Even for a die hard Wings fan, that is hilarious. And gotta love Tie Domi. Him and Probert…
I agree with ClizBiz – as a blogger and PR person I see both sides of it. But instead of gettiing worked up about it I just let it wash over me. I don't have an issue with reading the first few sentences of an email pitch to see if its relevant or not. And if its not relevant I've only wasted a few seconds of my day.
That said, the issue of 'spam' although I wouldn't call it spam just misguided pitches with good intentions at their heart, is the outcome of having clients still in the mindset of traditional PR where they want to see numbers of pitches. Its what they see as equating to ROI. its not ideal so its down to agencies to re-educate clients on expectations vs. deliverables.
[...] week I wrote a blog about Atomic PR and their illegal spamming of folks trying to generate buzz for their clients. [Note: they’ve since apologized and have agreed [...]
You two gentlemen are very odd.
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