This is definitely one for the Bad Pitch Blog

Now normally, I wouldn't consider the folks at dna13 to be a bunch of pathetic bad pitch-ers, but between the phone call and this email (comments added)  I hereby nominate them for the  The Bad Pitch Blog.

I’m not sure if you will be attending the PRSA Conference. (You could of course, check the agenda and figure out that I'm speaking not once but twice.) If so, I am contacting you to schedule a half hour meeting with Chris Johnson, CEO and founder of dna13, (Chris and I have met at least half a dozen times already, he hardly needs a PR person to bring us together. Hasn't he ever heard of Twitter, Facebook, or email?) at the PRSA show in

Philadelphia

at Booth #200 from October 21^st to 23^rd.  dna13 offers web-based communications and stakeholder management software designed to help communications and PR professionals manage, monitor and measure outreach and stakeholder relationships, that ultimately impact their brand and corporate reputation (that makes them sound like they are directly in competition with me)  More importantly, the company will be giving media a “sneak peak” demonstration of its 2008 release, which is focused on the next great advancement in PR measurement and insight, (I've been doing PR measurement for 20 years, if there is a "next great advancement"  the chances that I haven't already heard about it are slightly worse than Dennis Kucinich's chance of living in the White House.)  aimed at helping communicators validate their ROI (okay now you can start counting the number of buzz words in this paragraph...) with:

• Interactive Media Analytics – including enhanced media metrics and the ability to see pre-defined charts with dynamic dimensions -- (gosh, the ability to see charts, what a new concept, I think we started doing that in 1988)
• Enhanced
  Media Metrics – including: tonality, type
  of coverage, brand mentions, exclusivity, outlet and story prominence, ad-value
  equivalence and media type. (you aren't really trying to tell ME that the ability to track  tonality, type of coverage and brand mentions is new... let me show you a report we did that included that -- the date is, I believe, May 1987)
  
• Automatic
  Coverage Scoring – including: coverage and
  audience size, circulation data, publication focus based on data from providers
  such as Nielsen TV Reach   -- (gosh, automatic scoring, you mean you automatically put in circulation figures? Again, what a novel concept -- in 1989)

 I encourage you to meet with dna13, (only if you can explain to me why would I want to meet with someone who  spent zero time understanding me or my business???)

Comments

[KD Paine]

Anton, first of all, I am hardly "scared" of DNA13. And, in fact, have been given several demos of their product in the past. It's not a bad product at all. My point in nominating this for the "Bad Pitch Blog" was that the "pitch" was so impersonal and so clearly clueless about who they were pitching.

[anton sop]

Sorry to rain on your tirade, but this smacks of desperate posturing between a scared competitor and a seemingly benign invitation to play nice from a PR subordinate. Objectively, did you review their offering (unlikely since the release wasn't released at the time of this post) before concluding that their 'advancement' was anything but? Just playing the devil's advocate, but this seems to be the kind of thing that is wrong with the PR industry - too much posturing and not enough truth-defying.

[Kevin Dugan]

Wow. This is REALLY bad. Thanks for passing it along.