Meet Lois Whitman-Hess, from the New York based PR firm HWH. Lois is one of the most obnoxious PR people you’ll ever meet, and the poster child for everything that is wrong with the industry. Consider this part two of my ongoing discussion of the industry.
Lois takes pleasure in making people miserable, and her specialty is spamming. She first crossed our radar at CrunchGear, which reported on her exchange with PhoneScoop.
The PhoneScoop guys registered for CES, not realizing that their contact information would be blasted out to any PR firm that wanted it. When they received a very off-topic pitch email from Lois (about Samsung TVs), they sent it back with the message “Please remove me from your list. My publication does not cover these types of products. I did NOT sign up to receive info in this category, nor anything close. By CES guidelines, I should not have received this, making it dangerously close to spam. That reflects poorly on your company. Thank you.”
Bad idea. They received two messages back from Lois:
CES publishes a list of press. You are one of a few thousand. Everyone has access to that list for all kinds of reasons. It is publicly published. As a PR agency we use that list so we can solicit press for booth appts. I hope you can appreciate that. If you don’t, let me introduce you to the “delete” button. Or in the future do not sign up as a press person for CES. Furthermore, do not make any threats to my company. I don’t need you to tell me what is right or what is wrong. I have been in the CE business for 42 years.
and
I have seen nasty people like you melt away faster than a snowball going up hill in the rain. I am waiting for an apology. Maybe we can meet at CES for a hug or a slug. P.S. I just visited your web site. I would hardly call your blog a publication, However, you do have very interesting content and we have lots of client you would like to know more about to help you in your endeavors. Call me.
That’s enough right there for Hall of Shame induction. But a quick perusal of Lois’ blog indicates her willingness to spam and spam and spam until she gets what she wants:
In September the Bad Pitch Blog (a new favorite) also called out Lois for spamming, yet it continues. What I don’t understand is why her clients continue to bankroll this activity. You are supposed to hire these people because they have relationships with the media, not because they know how to effectively spam and are verbally abusive.
Yes, I am going to keep outing these people and their absurd behavior.
See all
Post
Hey Michael, considering its 3 or 4pm local time there, do you not sleep? Or, do you sleep-post now?
its 1 am here. going to bed now.
she may otr may not be a shill, but she said she was shrill
Don’t use her as an example of PR officer - she’s just a pathethic excuse of a person who possibly has the most shallow grasp and understanding of technology.
Just leave Lois Whitman alone !
: )
uuuuuuh
Michael, a blog post is not enough to actually change behavior.
You have to call the clients, and ask them to ask Ms. Whitman to change. You probably have email or voicemail about clients already, but here it is again:
Jim Lahren
Vice President of Marketing at Briggs & Riley
jlahren[at]briggs-riley.com
Daniel Frechtling
Vice President of Marketing at Dotster
(360) 449-5900
Andy Stathopolus
Vice President, Operations at Excalibur Electronics
(305) 477-8080
Henry Keum
managing director at iRiver
henry.keum[at}iriverinc.com
Why don’t you man up and call the client? Why are you trying to make Mike call?
I actually was recently laid off from one of the companies on Lois’s client list, so when I came across this article I couldn’t believe that her infamy had traveled this far.
I used to deal with her and her employees on a pretty regular basis to get our releases sent out to various online industry-related sites and I must say, Louis and her cronies are probably the MOST incompetent public relations team I have ever dealt with.
We would send them details that we wanted them to use to create our release and they would send us back a draft with so many typos and such poor grammar and organization that I wondered if they had paid a third grader to write it. My supervisor and I would have to re-write the entire release for them and send it back. Then Lois would send it back AGAIN saying she had made just a few minor “enhancements” that ended up making it again sound like shit. This sort of email correspondence would go back and forth a few more times until we were past the original release date we were shooting for, then she’d have her team finally send it out.
Lois always lectured you if you sent an email to one of her employees without CCing her and everyone else on her staff. She wanted to make sure everyone was “in the loop” at all times.
- If you managed multiple employees, would you want them CCing you on every single email they sent out throughout the day? No wonder she is so high strung. -
We’d also get regular updates on how our releases were “doing” and how many websites they were posted on, but I never really saw a significant increase in our web traffic or sales come from it…mostly just people looking for freebies.
I’m glad there are others sharing Lois stories out there. We should form a support group or something.
BTW: Dan Frechtling no longer works for Dotster.
Daywalker
I’ve lived in the same building as this wretched woman for 20+ years and she’s more miserable than this email seems.
Spam the bitch back!
What kind of crap is this? How does Samsung or Westinghouse justify to their shareholders that they’re wasting money on “PR” in this tough economy?????? F’in SPAMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Funny!!
Do PR people still not know that you don’t eff with Mike?
Has this post from her blog already been posted as well?
http://loiswhitman.blogspot.co.....elete.html
Allow Me To Introduce You To The Delete Button
I am a publicist. I get paid to publicize. My agency uses e-mail, snail mail, telephone, faxes, digital press rooms, face to face meetings, CD ROM, DVD, USB drives, and more to distribute the news.
Most of the time we use e-mail blasts because it is the easiest way to reach hundreds, sometimes thousands, of writers in the most expeditious way.
I receive several thousand e-mails per day. It takes me less than 10 minutes to delete the ones I do not want.
I do not understand journalists (thank goodness there are only a handful of them) who get on this spam kick. They ask to be deleted from mailings because they do not want to be spammed.
The time it took them to ask me to remove them from our mailing lists certainly took 100 percent more time than what it would have been to just “delete.”
I wonder what their bosses would think if they knew that their writers/editors did not want to receive information.
By asking to be cut from lists, you only cut yourself off in this world of digital communications.
Sure, you may not be interested in this particular news item, but who knows, the next one could be exactly what you need.
This morning Ned Colt called from NBC London asking to be taken off. A cross-Atlantic call instead of a simple delete.
I think that tells you something about a person. I am not going to say what.
At the most, he received three emails from us in the past month. 1, 2, 3, and he would have been rid of me. He choose to take 15 minutes out of his obvious, not busy schedule, to call and chat.
I rest my case.
I hope I get a lot of comments on this blog because I would love to debate spam any day of the week. I have been on both sides of the fence, editor and now a PR person.
Junk mail is a necessary evil. Get over it.
That post was from a year ago.
Wow, in a strange way, I think I agree with this. How hard is it really to delete her emails?
Even easier to just filter all emails from her address right into the spam folder.
You know what? She’s absolutely right. Just set up a rule on your e-mail client to delete everything that comes from her e-mail address…and then send an e-mail to the client company letting them know what you just did and why.
[spam]
just block people posting links, or make them registser. i hate this stuff so much
yeah, i know. we try to catch as much of it as we can. i just deleted the text though to keep your comments here (if i delete the comment the whole thread goes away).
I used to moderate the xbox.com forums and they used to have the threaded tree format posts. You delete one post/reply and it takes out everything that wasn’t a direct reply to the first comment!
Have you had any response from Lois?
That “Very Funny” URL is, of course, spam.
Michael I give you permission to make up huge savage stories about me. Have some fun - be creative - but SLAM me. I’ll take the traffic.
Mike, when you mention her, she becomes a star. Have you forgotten you’ve got the magic wand? (a bit of ass kissing there). Well, when I am ready with my project, I hope I can either charm or piss you off enough to appear on your posts.
But when clients see her getting blasted here (and other places), they have to weigh her results against the potential bad press. Fortunately lots of places can separate the PR from the company but after a while it gets a little bit too much.
The surprising part is that she’s been doing it for this long.
Why would you reward HWH with a very valuable TechCrunch link and not nofollow it. It seems to me that the last thing you want to do is reward the company for her bad behavior. And since HWH is not mentioned in the Title or H1 of your post - this will be a valuable link for keyword HWH.
Maybe these negative links should be nofollowed as part of your “outing”
http://sixkidsandafulltimejob......runch.html
Wow, kudos to you, Michael. People like that give me nightmares. When will these people understand that they cannot hid in the increasingly visible social media world?
Oops, typo, hide, not hid.
I kind of feel bad for her–she’s been in the industry since the first printing presses were invented, and is just now getting used to a new way of doing things. Surely there’s a better way to handle this..unless you guys get some sort of pleasure in ousting 60 year old women.
As far as I can tell, all she did was send one unsolicited email to you guys, is that worth making yourself look absolutely petty to the rest of the world? What do you want your readers to do, bombard her now?
Perhaps it’s time Mike took a break from the industry..
Her age has got nothing to do with it… whether she’s 60+ or not, if she’s behaving like an idiot that still makes her an idiot. Mugabe is in his 80s… does that make his behaviour any less reprehensible? Not that I’m comparing the two…
Nothing pisses me off more than rude and obnoxious people so I for one feel that this post was definitely warranted. Especially given the fact that she loves to spam. What’s there to like?
Disagree above. Age has got something to do with the learning capability. She will never understand the value of “not spamming”. It’s not an innocent position that she & companies like her take. Spare the emotion for some one else.
Cleaaaaarly she’s got problems. I get irritated by the homeless guys asking me for pocket change when I walk down the street on every other block in my town. But these people got real problems and so while I don’t give them anything, I certainly don’t go around kicking them around for shits and giggles.
Michael, you essentially did that her. You kicked her in the shins and she’s certainly unbalanced individual as it were.
She’s not some massive, botnet running, mafia connected spammer… she’s some old lady that’s trying to keep from become irrelevant and the joke is that she already is….
… well at least to those of us that have better things to do than to “out” losers for lame ways.
Really disappointed on this one. Now can we get on with more productive topics?!?
Deline
Today is one of those days when I totally love the internet.
Diggin your latest work Arrington, thinking I might forward these posts on to a couple of PR people in the Australian music industry who are kind of the opposite of these people in terms of the spam, but totally rock the embargo, and are complete pains to deal with unless all their rules are obeyed, meanwhile we’re all helping them get tonnes of exposure for their respective artists and festivals.. joy joy joy
Keep em coming Michael.
I feel sorry for her too, she sounds exhausted and very unhappy
Haha I hope she sues your pants off and gets your job!
You are the biggest dick in the industry …. and I don’t mean swinging!
Crazy bitch like that could very well sue you for slander and there you’ll see time and money just waste of away because of wha…? Some PR woman that forgot to take her meds that morning?
http://loiswhitman.blogspot.co.....-girl.html
“Most of the time I am an aggressive businesswoman spewing out information that makes deals and sets policy. This morning I was the mother of a 13 year old Maltese who needs me to wipe her rear.
Now that I think about it, somedays there is little difference between what I have to do at my two jobs.”
Classy.
Well, perhaps she will inadvertently be a policy maker as a result of this bitch…err witch hunt.
Hint: PR industry, SPAM = BAD, especially when you’re dealing with techy people, it has a detrimental effect.
Especially techy people who might happen to be read by techy people running techy blogs with a lot of techy readership
ROFL:
would.nt it be the mother of ALL ironies if THIS publicity from one of the world’s most read blogs end up helping her.
Well, if nothing else I took a look at her client list and made note of Dotster. I was thinking about them and GoDaddy (not like I stay up at night about this) for a domain name I need to pick up and this made it easy.
Her asshole move cost her one (small) piece of business for one of her clients.
God, I love a boycott.
If Mike comes back with more news about her being a prick, I’ll be picking up an LG instead of a Samsung. And I already own a Samsung LCD and I like Samsung. But I’d take any opportunity to stick it to this bitch…and her clients.
Weebil, no need to wait for more news from Mike, just go on out and get yourself an LG, you won’t regret it.
Ken H.
http://www.twitter.com/visitken
I can answer Lois’s question: She’s still doing this at her age because she’s a hack. Smart PR people realize that they have to treat journalists and bloggers like people, not numbers.
I can’t believe this article comes up already #4 on google when you enter Lois Whitman. It’s sad to end a career this way.
Michael, how does it feel to be God?
Come on people! You are going to spoil Michael’s personality with frivolous accolades. Next thing you know, his posts will become as bi-polar as the excerpts I just read.
I don’t think I have seen a more appropriate use of ‘obnoxious’, than to describe how Lois seems to be. What a barnacle!
Lady! …. Lois! …. change your ways, or you will crash and burn in an industry that is far different than the dark ages you grew up in. Pestilence is no longer appreciated; if it ever was!
You might want to consider the above post as one of those close calls - a shot across the bow - that remind you of your mortality.
“Michael, how does it feel to be God?”
normal?
Mike it’s posts like these that keep me reading TechCrunch. No other major blog has the balls to call people out on their bullshit (my own bullshit included, unfortunately).
Keep on rockin!
I didn’t like Michael Arrington until now (briefly met him couple years ago) but that has changed completely.
He is putting himself on a dangerous corner, but knowing he’ll win this one. It is time to set some boundaries on all this PR non-sense. Good job, Michael, we don’t love you but we stand by you on this one
Lol nice article. I do feel for the old women though.
I’d like to see if this Lois Whitman-Hess person even attempts to comment on this post. I doubt it. HAHA
She sure looks like a taught lady
I bet her clients love her.
So, after reading this post, I went to her blog and read this post titled “Do you know why John Mc Cain is going to win in November?”
http://loiswhitman.blogspot.co.....going.html
talk about being over confident!
pwned.
She needs to learn how to do a soft-sell… I think she would have more success at it. Maybe TC will make her change her ways!
Jon
http://DreamClue.com …get the message!
man, is she going down. Mwhahaha.
I was going to try to link her traffic compared to techcrunch - and compete doesn’t even show any traffic for her - my shitty blog shows more traffic. Jesus H. Christ. Shut this sandbag up already!
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
Mike,
The trick I used on my blog was to offer to blog about each PR spam with real names and email attached with the most SEO leveraged title I could think of to get into search engines using google bomb techniques..
After one or two times evidently the word went out to al pr firms..I have not had ot do it since and that was about 4 yeas ago..
Here’s one that doesn’t involve Lois, but a certain OTHER PR person who will remain nameless. A longtime reporter leaving the company sent out a heartfelt and emotional farewell to about 30 peeps and this PR person was among those cc’d. Within 5 minutes, everyone on the email had received a “form letter” from this PR person requesting all kinds of info (spouse’s name!?) as a run-up for story pitches. I privately emailed this PR person and took her down a peg for such insensitivity … tried to explain the idea “there’s a time and a place,” etc. The obliviousness of the emails I got back from her were truly startling. Indeed, I was invited for drinks or some such and assured that the person leaving, the one who’d sent the emotional email in the 1st place, would surely be “just fine” with her actions. Amazing. Just amazing.
(Relevant repost)
Why not set up a PR section to TechCrunch - PressCrunch.
Charge $150 a pop for approved submissions and let the hoards of readers and cross press that rely on TechCrunch daily anyway have a dedicated area to RSS and get news.
Of course, the TC articles are interesting for the perspective of the writers here, not so much the event of news. Millions come here to read because of TC’s personality, if not then news.com would be my first stop every morning but its not.
Consider it, PressCrunch, a new revenue stream for TC and PR firms don’t have to go away, just pay
I think this will be a good solution for the big fish and the growing fish.
Disclaimer: Neither I or my company make any legal claims to the name “PressCrunch” and we waive any and all claims of such trademark as it is given only as an mere idea for the owners of TechCrunch.com.
She doesn’t sound like she’s very nice. If she called me, I would consider her one of those annoying people I have to deal with and wouldn’t want to call her back either!
Don’t people have enough on their plate in the business world that they don’t have to worry about spam from *inside* the industry? Shame on you, Lois.
Finally she got the whole coverage she always wanted :p
lol omg !
But Mike,
if people like her didn’t “spam” you with news, what would you do? god forbid you would go out and find your own stories instead of them magically appearing in your inbox.
Do not haunt the lady, she is doing a PR’s job. What else is she supposed to do?
http://www.nichea.info
Lifetime. Television, for idiots.
For the record, I DID realize that “my contact information would be blasted out to any PR firm that wanted it”, I just thought it would be filtered by product category. When you register, they ask you what product categories you cover and - I maintain - imply that you are granting permission for PR blasts only in those product categories.
Apparently that is not the case. I’ll own up to being wrong about that. My bad.
Still, we could have had a civilized conversation about that misunderstanding. Lois chose a different option.
And what kind of option is TechCrunch choosing?
Indeed, Rich! What kind of option did y’all choose. I’ve known Lois and HWH for a bunch of years and they’re good people. Overbearing New Yorkers, yes, but then, I’m from Noo Yawk, too. Wanna make something of it?
There **is** a delete button, sir, and believe me, I use it all the time. That’s the best thing, IMO: if I don’t burn PR folks, they might someday offer something useful!
I want to make something of it. Is being from New York a catch all excuse for being a moronic idiot? She is an idiot. Her age, gender, and location are irrelevant.
am I the only one who, while undestandable that you’re annoyed with the emails, understands that a human reaction to your wording makes the recipient get defensive? Re-read your email. Her reort was childish and unprofessional, and while you shouldn’t have gotten the email in the first place I can’t imagine why you’re surprised that someone who’s aggressive enough to send it by email scraping isn’t going to get defensive when you challenge her in the way you did.
I thought PR stood for Public Relations, as in this person is supposed to be good at dealing with people. Say what you want about his email to her, her email was unsolicited and annoying to begin with, her email to him clearly shows she needs to work on that whole PR part of being in PR.
Also, what type of PR person makes fun of bloggers and journalists? Are you mental?
PR spam and disreputable PR firms proliferate and they are a blight on the planet. I had a recent encounter with one that continually spams the communications sector. And while they take people of their email list and apologize and how they’ll never do it again, they never stop the spam. Most of us just blackhole their domains so we don’t have to deal with them.
http://stardustglobalventures.com/?p=187
Mike - The Bad Pitch Blog gave her our Lifetime Achievement award and went so far as to mention her clients in doing so. She’s that bad.
We’re tired of folks like her taking our industry’s reputation into the toilet.
We also reached out to her and let her know about our concerns over her tactics and never received a single reply. She does not care.
Thanks for the kind words about our site. We’re hell bent to improve PR practices. Folks like Lois won’t change their ways but we’re making progress with students and new recruits.
So much useful information. So little time….
I’m positive that whether or not the journalists contact info was “published publicy,” legally she still has to abide by CAN SPAM, which says that recipients MUST be able to opt-out (in addition to several other guidelines)
Somebody call the email police! Though clearly that’s only a small part of the problem with this lady.
Undoubtedly this is a huge embarrassment to PR people everywhere.
I don’t know if this is an embarrassment to PR people EVERYWHERE. More of an embarrassment for her, her company and her clients.
I don’t think all PR professionals can be lumped into the same category as this lady. There are bad apples in every profession.
Talking about bad practices is essential for moving forward. Everyone brings a unique and valid perspective to the table.
Their website looks 60 years old
Maybe her kind is a dying breed… There’s hope for the PR World yet as people realize that constant spamming is an inadequate substitute for strategic networking.
Thanks for posting this. This kind of petty stuff should be outed.
Wow, her blog is a creepy read.
Though nobody likes unsolicited email, I think your post comes close to the textbook definition of libel.
It’s only libel if it’s proven to be untrue. That may not be likely in this case. Although, there’s always PR value in suing for libel even though you know you will probably lose.
…in Britain, maybe.
Not in this country is this anywhere NEAR libel. Here journalists have better protections from that sort of legal witchcraft.
“why her clients continue to bankroll this activity.”? Why do people use SPAM? Because in the end it works.
i bet she smokes virginia slims through a cigarette holder, wears old lady perfume and has a dalmatian fur coat.
this lady isn’t PR. seriously? 45 VMs? christ, i’m happy that journalists and bloggers loathe phone calls - i hate making them!
Man, some of y’all are mean. Clearly, the world of PR has evolved and she has modernize her ways or perhaps she was never that good to begin with, but all of this venom is undeserved. She’s not spamming all of us.
PressCrunch?
I like it, 1-vote from me.
Feel we should set up a poll for sure.
PS: I logged in for this coment via FB Connect and it worked!
I like it. Another vote from me. I’m sure MA could recruit volunteer writers from other tech blogs. Could be like a Consumerist but only for annoying PR people.
I’m in complete shock. It’s people like her who give all PR professionals a bad name. Fortunately, some of us know better than to behave this way.
Best line:
“Maybe we can meet at CES for a hug or a slug”
… simply hilarious.