A while ago, I hinted that y'all should keep tuning in to see if my opinions of various tech PR firms have changed any since my last post on the subject. Here's how they're all doing:
Bite PR
As far as the Apple group is concerned, I haven't had any contact with them since our last discussion. No invites. No nothing. But then there haven't been any events to be invited to and I haven't needed to ask Apple for anything. I have heard some funny stories of general cluelessness since then, but I won't publish them in order to protect my source. They are really funny though.
It is interesting, however, that they came to this blog via a Google search for “Bite PR” and despite my general slagging off of Apple since (and blatant request for a free G5 Quad), I haven't heard a peep out of them. Who wants to bet, though, that by including “Bite PR” as one of my Technorati tags, I might start to see some activity from them in my logs?
I have, however, had contact with some of Bite's other staff, including James Taylor who handles the Gartner account. He was very good, responded to emails, provided pictures, offered a good interviewee before I'd even had to ask him for one. Excellent. Admittedly, the interviewee called two days before he was supposed to and before we'd even arranged a time for the interview, but that wasn't such a terrible thing. It just left me a little bit unprepared, that's all.
Text 100
Still getting lots of lovely press releases from them. My one dealing with them since is not impressing: PR person in question hasn't responded to two emails so far - which in turn were a response to her email! Still, that might not be her fault, since she may need some information from the vendor in question (three guesses which vendor, given my previous discussions on the subject). Or she may be ill. No visits to my blog since the last posting, which saw an amazing 16 visitors from the text100.co.uk domain. Again, the initial visit was from a Google search on “blog text 100”.
UPDATE: She was ill. And the vendor wasn't very helpful, either. So Text 100 is in the clear. Still amazed by how many diseases all you people get. I'm getting visions of me as Charlton Heston in The Omega Man if the avian flu ever hits, because my immune system's better than Domestos.
The Red Consultancy
Now officially the worst PR company, given our previously agreed metrics. I've not heard a peep out of them. They don't even search for stuff about themselves, let alone their clients, it seems. Their previous crime - not being able to arrange an interview with Microsoft despite being given three weeks lead time - has been further compounded by the fact that Microsoft went and released an enterprise desktop search tool the very day my article on the subject came out. You'd have thought that might have been a handy thing for me to know about when I was writing it, wouldn't you?
Lastly, in the interests of balance, I thought I'd highlight some good PRs, just to prove I don't have the typical journo's prejudice against all PRs. They're in no particular order and I won't list the reasons why I think they're good. Just suffice it to say they know how to do their job well.
- Jesper Nielsen at Porter Novelli
- Matthew Cross at Axicom
- Helen Lord at Apple
- Jillian Alexander at Chameleon PR
There are others, but I'll save them for next time, when we find out again who are the sinners and who are the winners in the world of tech PR.
Technorati Tags: Bite PR, PRs, tech journalism, Text 100, The Red Consultancy
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