The Haggler: Swatting at a Swarm of Public Relations Spam

The Haggler typically starts his column with a complaint, and this time it’s the Haggler’s turn to complain. Specifically, the Haggler would like to complain about the complaints he’s getting.

“In January,” one of them began, “we traveled to Myanmar and purchased two wooden statues in a shop in Yangon.” This might be the least promising start of all time to a Haggler letter. Because do you know how much juice the Haggler has in Myanmar?

None, ladies and gentlemen. Not a drop.

Where are the emails about mortgage rip-offs and foreclosure scams? Or rent-to-own fiascos? Or moving-company nightmares? Oh, how the Haggler longs for these gruesome yarns! Instead, do you know what hogs space in his benighted in-box?Emails with headers like “New! First Self-Chilling Iceless Drinking Glass — Editorial Sample?”

This is an unsolicited public relations pitch — P.R. spam, more succinctly — one of hundreds of thousands that belly-flop into the email systems of journalists every day. Readers, the Haggler asks for your indulgence because, in this episode, we focus on a scourge that affects a rather narrow subset of humanity — namely, reporters.

A few months back, alterations were made to The New York Times’s email system, and suddenly the Haggler noticed that P.R. spam started showing up the way flying monkeys appear in “The Wizard of Oz.” Swarms landed each day, imploring the Haggler to write about Christmas Cookie Treat Boxes, or a document previewer called Igloo, or a liquor called Pura Vida Tequila, which “will be in the house this season at Qualcomm Stadium.”

Woo-hoo.

The odds of the Haggler writing about any of these topics could safely be described as nil. Yet some company hired a public relations firm to send the Haggler, and presumably countless other reporters, the same information. This seemed like a waste of energy and money, so the Haggler decided to find out what was behind this antiquated attempt to win media attention — who was paying for it, and why?

The Haggler started by emailing the P.R. reps whose names were attached to these emails, posing a simple question: Where did you get the Haggler’s address? One answer came up time and again: Vocus, a publicly traded company based in Beltsville, Md. Among its products is access to a database of reporters’ email addresses.

So the Haggler decided to get in touch with Vocus and politely ask to be removed from the company’s system. This proved to be a challenge. First, the Haggler tried email. No response. Then a call was made to headquarters.

“May I speak to Rick Rudman?” quoth the Haggler.

“Who?” the receptionist answered.

“Rick Rudman. The C.E.O.”

“Just a moment,” she said. There was a long pause, and then the Haggler wound up in the telecommunication version of oblivion. After another failed attempt or two at an office call, the Haggler started phoning Vocus executives at home, around 8 p.m. But several had numbers that were no longer in service. It was as though these people knew that reporters would someday come looking for them, and they long ago took evasive measures.

Or so it seemed until one evening when the Haggler interrupted the dinner of You Mon Tsang, a senior vice president. Mr. Tsang sounded sincerely apologetic and promised to delete the Haggler from the Vocus database. Within 48 hours, the onslaught of P.R. spam had all but ceased. It was a happy, happy day.

But this one step seemed insufficient. P.R. spam is fed by companies that hire P.R. companies that pay database companies like Vocus, or their handful of competitors. So if you want to focus on root causes, you must ask: Why would any company spend money to blanket reporters with email they didn’t ask for and almost surely don’t want?

The Haggler put this question to Andrew Lazorchak, managing director of Soireehome, the company behind the self-chilling, iceless drinking glass. It was news to him that his company’s public relations firm, Avalon Communications, was spending any part of Soireehome’s $1,500-a-month retainer on spam email. And it was news he didn’t like.

“I’m happy to get this call,” he said. “We don’t know what Avalon does on a day-to-day basis. They just send us a bimonthly report, detailing what they have been able to do for our company.”

Avalon can usually point to one P.R. coup a month, Mr. Lazorchak said, in most cases an appearance in a glossy magazine.

“But they should not be bombarding journalists,” he said. “That’s like fishing with dynamite.”

A great metaphor, except that fishing with dynamite probably yields more bounty than spam emailing, doesn’t it? The Haggler wanted to ask Avalon Communications, which is based in Austin, Tex., but the company did not respond to a phone call, an email or a Facebook message. Ironic, given that it specializes in communicating.

The Haggler suggests that any company now spending money on P.R. spam demand a better strategy. In the meantime, there is no reason that other reporters can’t do what the Haggler did: Write to the most prominent database collectors and ask to be deleted. Below is a one-paragraph, get-out-of-P.R.-spam kit.

Just send a short, polite “please delete me” note to jholley@vocus.com at Vocus; Kevin.Miller@cision.com at Cision; Caitlin.Carragee@prnewswire.com at PRNewswire; blee@marketwired.com at Marketwired; and Raschanda.Hall@businesswire.com at Business Wire.

At minimum, there should be fewer unwanted intrusions in your inbox. And, maybe, if these databases become depleted enough, they will seem like a waste of money to media-hungry companies. So, reporters of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but an editorial sample of an iceless, self-chilling drinking glass.

EMAIL: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.