Dear PR People: Stop Wasting Your Clients' Money

Dear PR People: Please stop wasting your clients' money. I love gifts and goodies as much as the next blogger, and gleefully accept them if I am interested in covering them.

But I don't drink soda, so Jones Soda didn't need to spend a bunch of money to send me their newest soda. It's green, yecch!

I mention this one only because it's the latest unsolicited PR gift I've received. Jones is making soda with pure cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. That's very good. I'm sure my teenage nephews would love to taste it, so I'll give it to them this weekend.

Frankly, I've forgotten the other packages I've thrown out because, well, I threw them out. Often unopened.

I have written lots of positive stuff about Jones, and will continue to do so when they do cool things. But this was dumb. ASK someone if they want to try your product. How hard is that?

Both Jeremy Pepper and Michael Power told me via Twitter that they would LOVE some Jones Soda

Brian Solis has a good post about what's wrong with PR. He talks about the need to put the pro back in professional PR, and the need to can the hype. Do read it.

And please, next time you want to send me something, ask me if I want it before you waste your clients' money.

Can we send you some Purple Bubble Wrap? Pretty please? ;)

Jason: you sure can! What great stuff you have on your site.

But you still wrote about Jones, didn't ya? I see your point...sort of. Maybe they sent it because you mentioned them in the past–hoping you would again. So do they fall into the realm of useless swag or should Jones declare 'mission accomplished'?