My War Against the Red-Braced Del-Boys

Let's make one thing absolutely clear: Unlike other bloggers (you know, the ones with principles), I am more than happy to allow both individuals and companies plug their wares on these pages, particularly if actual cash money and/or free swag changes hands.

What I won't stand for, though, are red-braced Del-Boys at PR companies trying little tricks trying to get their content on my pages on the sly. Take this little exchange, for example, which came with a plea to plug a YouTube video on behalf of an Australian company:

Hi,

I've been visiting Scaryduck: Not scary. Not a duck for a few months now and really like it! I'm reaching out to you because of a video on youtube that I thought your other readers may enjoy. It's a video of a crazy vending machine put in a mall in Australia that gets people to do hilarious things in order to get a snack for free.

The neat part of this story is I actually am in the crowd in part of the clip, so I'm pretty excited about it all! It was pretty crazy I happened upon a big group of people surrounding the machine and random dancing haha.

[Link to video removed]

Hope you post,
Alex

Yeah, right. Nobody writes like that and deserves to live. My suspicions roused, I took to Twitter to see if anybody else had received similar, and within seconds, two well-known bloggers replied in the positive. A touch of my ninja-style Google-fu confirmed my suspicions, and even found the name of the PR company. Caught, as they say, like a Treen in a disabled space cruiser.

Time I wrote back, then.

"Alex"

Are you a genuine person? I know at least two other UK bloggers who got this very same email and it whiffs of a marketing campaign. If you're going to run a marketing campaign, at least be honest about it and try not to trick people into thinking it's user generated content. Bloggers don't like being mislead. They write stuff about being mislead because it makes them cross.

If you are a real person and I am wrong, I will happily prostrate myself before you in abject apology and post the video every day for a month.

Regards to all at [PR Company name removed]

Your new pal

Etc

They do not reply.

Name names? I could not possible sink so low and get you to Google "Delite-o-Matic", because that would be wrong.

PR companies: You are welcome here, but in the words of TV's Wil Wheaton: DON'T BE A DICK.