Jimmy Breslin’s famous query about the hapless 1962 New York Mets seems apropos of many PR “professionals” these days as they scramble to turn those inviting “Comments” sections of blogs into promotional nuggets for their clients.   Many of these nuggets are so blatantly obvious and written in such PR mush that they have the undesired effect of making the companies mentioned (even the innocent bystanders) look silly and manipulative

Here’s an example from Zoli’s Blog yesterday: 

Sam writes:  Either way you go…without an efficient software infrastructure, we could not have coped with the expansion of the past years. Previously, financial accounting and retail were accommodated by stand-alone applications. A custom interface supported communication between the two applications, which meant that data had to be captured twice or imported a second time.

We realized that at some point in the near future, this type of data handling and storage would no longer support our expanding business and would render the system too inflexible to support the expanding number of product variants. This led to the decision to implement a new solution that could handle everything – now and in the future.

We are in San Diego and were paired up with a company called Tryarc (www.tryarc.com) in Los Angeles. They are a premier SAP business partner. While our first impression was SAP is too much for what we need, Tryarc turned us onto the SAP solution for small and midsize enterprises; it’s called SAP Business One. A subsequent presentation of the product had us convinced. SAP Business One was implemented in just a matter of weeks – in part because the standard functions of SAP Business One matched 95% of our business processes. We implemented an interface to our Web shop using SAP Business One Software Development Kit, enabling incoming Internet orders to flow automatically into the business software.

Now, all enterprise management functions are accommodated in one system. SAP Business One provides entirely new opportunities. The only alternative would have been to invest considerable sums in additional stand-alone solutions. Our infrastructure made this pointless. In addition to being the more economical solution, SAP Business One is more comprehensive. It plays its part in making the processes in the company much more transparent than before. Purchasing and sales processes used to be separate, manual transactions supported by paper forms that were stored in file cabinets and forwarded by hand when required. Today, when an order is created and confirmed, a delivery note and invoice are generated, giving the warehouse the go-ahead for delivery. In parallel, the transaction is shown as an open item in accounting.

If the merchandise is in stock, customers can receive their order immediately.

Finally, each department can access this system and exchange data with the other divisions. The result is a significant improvement in the internal information flow. This is particularly important for an enterprise like ours that covers all of the manufacturing steps – from development and production to sales and technical support. Today, the time between placing an order and delivery averages less than 24 hours. The improvements delivered by SAP Business One lay the groundwork for the continuing growth of our company. For example, we are planning to exchange price and delivery data with its customers via an electronic data interchange interface in the near future.

The enterprise wide system is an investment worth it’s weight in gold. We could not be happier with SAP and the people at Tryarc who helped us get up and running. 

The link on Sam’s name goes back to Tryarc so this is likely a clumsy attempt to plant a fake testimonial as a legitimate comment.  It’s embarrassing for Tryarc and for SAP, who had nothing to do with it and wouldn’t have because they’re one of the smartest companies out there on the social media front.

Zoli, who has a lot more patience than most, offered some sound advice in response:

Sam, or whoever you are. I will not delete this comment, because you do make a point about the value of integrated systems, which, as a former SAP-er I appreciate. But generally speaking, this would be considered spam since:

- It’s a canned long sales pitch not directly relevant to the subject (OK, a tiny bit relevant, very remotely).

- You misrepresent yourself. Next time, if you pretend to be a customer, you might want to drop some detail of “your” business, that would actually support your long pitch.

Last but not least, I used to run businesses like Tryarc, and I don’t think spam is the best way to market yourselves.

One more example (hat tip to Jeff Nolan).  This is how Ben Popken, an editor at The Consumerist reacted to a planted comment yesterday:

Death to Sockpuppets
Stay Out Of Our Comments, PR Douchebags

 

Regarding this morning’s “Bank Of America Wins, Buys Chicago’s LaSalle Bank,” commenter “Stankwell,” whose first and only comment was up today, wrote:

LaSalle customers should be happy. Among other things, they’re gaining access to world-class online banking and a coast-to-coast branch and ATM network.

As to charitable giving: BofA is a monster — the good kind! Evidence shows that local donations go up considerably under the new regime. Ask any informed person in Boston or San Francisco.

Talking points much? Nice try. Seriously. You almost sound like a human. But no. BANNED.

Considerably less charitable than Zoli, for sure, but Popken does offer a piece of advice later that PR people should have stenciled on their wrists:    “Slogans and marketing-speak glow like ugly neon because they are phony. This is an anti-phony web site for consumers. It wasn’t so much what was said, but how it was said.”

There is absolutely no reason why PR people can’t be part of the conversation but, they have to to to learn toplay by the new rules.  Be transparent, lose the jargon, and add something of real value.