Beth Brody of Brody PR sent out what appeared to be a harmless email this morning but I can guarantee she didn’t expect her firm to go down the drain in a matter of hours. At 8:42 AM this morning Beth sent an email out promoting a new “Social Media Guide For Small Business” to a group of individuals who are already experts on social media, hoping that they would write about the guide. The result was a series of at least 20 emails including numerous from industry influencers like Om Malik, Francine Hardaway, and Shel Israel.
Typically I wouldn’t write about such a series of emails but this one was particularly disastrous. What was most hilarious about the emails was that not a single participant decided to avoid replying back to the list email address which had no restrictions on who could send it. Typically when you create an email list you place restrictions on who can send messages through the list but as I said this one had none.
Five hours and thirty emails later, Beth is still missing in action but the damage has already been done. Beth’s previous spam emails had been deleted from my inbox immediately but this was the one which resulted in a climactic conclusion. If you are looking for a PR firm, I’d suggest avoiding Brody PR until they go through a significant rebranding and this issue is all but forgotten.
If you’ve never heard of Brody PR before, it’s not surprising. Check out the company’s website which includes a collection of animated GIFs that are reminiscent of the year 1995. Typically I don’t hang a PR firm out to dry when they slip up as everyone makes errors but this one was bad. Honestly, the majority of the people on the email list could have just ignored the emails rather than continuing to reply to the list, knowing that everyone would see it.
I was personally laughing throughout the whole experience but at a certain point it became annoying. Beth Brody could have stepped in to resolve the problem but as of now she is still missing in action and her company has just been put on the spam lists of a large number of industry influencers. Lesson learned: don’t create an open email list where anyone can reply when sending out press releases. Other lesson learned: don’t hire Brody PR.
Update
Read my latest post before you slam me in the comments. Additionally, notice that this was not a simple CC/BCC email problem. It was a failure of the person managing the email list who let anybody reply to the email list address. I have had many CC/BCC problems in the past and I’ve stopped writing about them. The issue was not with the technical glitch but that the issue wasn’t thoroughly resolved for days.
Beth Brody has since set up a blog and has reached out with a personal note in the comments which I think is a step in the right direction. If she wants help learning about this space I’m happy to provide Beth with free membership to my social media marketing program so that she can get more savvy. Feel free to reach out Beth!
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Your comments are on point. I think you've actually helped her PR firm, by linking back to her site, which has low trust with Google. Perhaps she is so clever that she intentionally wanted to draw attention, such that a bunch of bloggers would link to her-- thus, making her site (PR2 and almost no traffic according to 3rd party measurement sites), a mini-sensation.
She should thank you for this free PR!
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google PR went down too *chuckles*
http://mp3grape.com
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1) Brody PR made a huge mistake in the CC column. I will say this that other much larger PR firms have done the same- outing a *huge* number of editors @ various publications both print and online and giving everyone access to stylists, top editors and online writer email addresses. I think it's not a good idea to do that but if it happens, you email everyone in the group again and apologize and see if you can recall the email that was originally sent out.
2) damage control is not Brody's strong suit- that's clear. When a mea culpa is needed, say it fast and say it with sincerity and make sure you learn from the process.
3) Nick -- have charity and sympathy for those not quite as savvy as you are. You could make that clear by a suggestion that she contact someone highly skilled in social media on how to help her clear up her gaffe asap.
Sometimes people make mistakes and just would rather hide under the table. However fessing up often helps.
Not that I disagree with entirely with what you have done-- I could have outed major PR firms in the last year for things they have done -- but didn't because I chose to not alienate people.
4) while we all have learned something here--which particularly Ms Brody should have-- and everyone here should note that compassion and understanding and perhaps a private note to someone first to let them know it's coming online as a post is a good heads up so they can start spinning the damage control asap.
I might be hanging myself here with people who have no clue who I am (well I know more of those posting than you would know me for certain) but as a person who really works hard on social media, editorial pieces and have helped/advised a number of pr people over a very long term, it's sometimes a good thing to help others even when they didn't ask for your help or offended you.
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What I will say is that after getting the flood of emails I did a reply only to sender and asked to be removed from the. To her credit, I received no further emails on the thread after that (the thread did continue for another couple of hours as I know from seeing the notes excerpted elsewhere.
The part that bothers me is the way in which her utter failure at one of the most basic, fundamental skills of PR now casts a pall on the rest of the communications professionals out there who *are* doing great work.
We cannot blame an industry for the ineptitude of one.
And for the record, Nick. While I do appreciate your perspective, you may also want to check your own grammar and such ... hard to throw stones when you're living in glass house yourself.
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This whole thing reminds me of the bullies in middle school. I just hope the people who piled on Beth beyond all reason and rational behavior for an honest mistake that ANY OF US COULD MAKE and for not answering them when they were pounding on the table, well, I hope those folks never make a mistake in their professional lives. Because it's obvious that social media participants are more antisocial than social when it comes to sensing some blood in the water.
That's a real shame, in my opinion. We ought to be better than that!
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Don't you have any real work to do?
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Disclaimer: I am an Empower MediaMarketing employee and this is my own opinion.
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Stop being s judgmental and over reactive. Everyone makes mistakes, and in this economy the last thing we should be doing is eating whole companies alive because of a clerical error.
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None of you ever makes a mistake, right? No compassion at all in the blogosphere? Hope you all have thick skin when you make a mistake -- and you will make one some day -- because the long knives will come out pointing in your direction then.
Nowadays, it seems like it's more important to embarrass someone than to say something of substance. Instead of jumping all over the person who made the mistake, how about some practical blog entries about things to be careful of and traps you might fall in that will make bloggers want to dishonor you?
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Here job is to reach out to us and so far all of her press releases haven't come off to well. I tend to be a polite individual and rarely discuss when someone slips up but this turned into a disaster and all she need to do was to delete the list from running at all and start a new one.
It took 8 hours to figure it out. She still hasn't sent a follow-up email to anybody to explain what happened and engage them directly. She also apologizes in the comments here yet doesn't understand what technically went wrong when sending emails is practically her job.
I honestly don't want to be rude but she just made one mistake after another and IT'S HER JOB to know these things. I've seen mistakes like this made before but typically it was squashed in no time at all.
Best,
Nick
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Sad how you take you time to slate other people for an error anyone can make.
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I bet you Beth Brody writes a book about the incident and all the blowhards out there will "join the conversation" and write about it.
Hey, maybe I'll start a blog about blogging - oh, too late.
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Clearly what she should have done is get some even uglier eye-distracting animated gifs and put them under a big banner saying "My Sponsors".
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Dear Nick,
I created a list of social media experts who might be interested in reviewing a new guide to social media for small biz. I inadvertently put the list name in the cc: box, rather than the bcc: box. A few folks must have hit the "reply all" button, rather than clicking on the “unsubscribe link” at the bottom, which started a stream of spam. Please accept my personal apology, albeit a little late in the day, since I was trying to remove everyone who wanted to be unsubscribed from the list immediately.
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