I’m one of those people who really did kill her television. I pretty much hate hype, and “PR” to me still stands for “punk rock.” But the reality is we live in a city with a disproportionate number of publicists and PR goons, and I can accept that.

Here’s a simple request though: if you’re going to spend your life pressing flesh and kissing babies, at least do it well. A recent run-in with an Astroturf queen here on Metblogs made me realize that a few tips might be useful for y’all whose life work is devoted to manufacturing desire.

1. If we post a rant/slam/critique of your client/project/company, say for instance, hypothetically speaking, a post like my send up of Blankspaces, and you want to post a rebuttal comment, don’t pretend to be a random customer/fan.
2. If you insist on pretending to be a random customer/fan rather than telling the truth, don’t do so from the work email address that identifies you as, in fact, the company’s publicist.
3. If you do make the mistake of using your work email to leave such a comment and one of us emails you to request that you unveil yourself don’t include two smilies and two exclamation points in the response.
4. And for the love of god, don’t try to buy our enthusiasm with something like, hypothetically speaking, an offer of forty free cube hours at a place like Blankspaces accompanied by photographs of scary shadow people walking around the workspace.

 Hope this helps! Happy selling. :-)

(Ingorrr’s Astroturf suit picture used through a Creative Commons license.)

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