Why some call it ‘the dark side’…

By Sally Saville Hodge

Plenty of bloggers are out there who have made it a specialty of outing really bad PR practices. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of fodder to work with.

I’m not about to give Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan at The Bad Pitch Blog a run for their money, but occasionally, Richard flags an instance of egregiously horrendous behavior that I have to share.

In posting about it on Facebook, he called it “funny.” (And not in a ha-ha way.) I couldn’t watch the clip without cringing and feeling truly embarrassed on this practitioner’s behalf…since clearly he was totally oblivious to the many ways he was crossing the boundaries of professional and just plain interpersonal behaviors.

Clients: Do not mistakenly believe this is the kind of aggressiveness you want in your PR person. It damages not only his brand, but yours.

There’s a reason many of my journalist friends talk about moving into PR as going to the dark side.