DISQUS

Elias · 1 year ago

For all the excellent PR firms out there, there are those that deserve to get kicked to the curb for these kinds of practices. What I find so ironic is that PR agencies are supposed to be exceptional at insightful, persuasive writing.

You've done an excellent rebuttal, well done. One hopes the PR firm will handle its own PR and issue an apology and possibly even pay you for using your content. Now that would be a fair and kind gesture. One only hopes the leaders of this PR firm know enough about their craft to resolve this apparent lack of judgment on their part.

Happy Holidays to you and I enjoyed reading your post, and was enriched by it.

learyb · 1 year ago

Elias thanks so much for your kind words and wishes. We can only hope L&S will step up and rectify the situation. We shall see...

Thanks again and happy holidays to you and yours as well!

Kimberly · 1 year ago

Just when I thought we were scraping the sludge from the depths of the integrity barrel, along come these bottom feeders at LaForce-Stevens. Their blatant arrogance in thinking they could pass your material off as their own is reprehensible. It also shows that they have no real concept of the power and camaraderie of Web 2.0 otherwise, they would have known that this would come back to bite them in the ass... Quickly! We can only hope that their clients get wind of the kind of shop they're running and respond accordingly. Based on your worldwide and frequently vocal following, I doubt this is the end of this issue. Hell, I'm tempted to send them a sententious volume or two of hate mail but I'll be good...

learyb · 1 year ago

Thanks for your support Kimberly. You're definitely a true friend!

TheJennTafur · 1 year ago

Wow, the ethics in blogging and especially dealing with PR people continues to amaze me. No wonder PR agencies are given a bad name. I am so sorry this happened to you, Brent. This is why i advise when you are creating your own content to have a creative commons license on your blog. But, in some instances like this when it is blatant plagiarism you did the right thing which is to call them OUT like that. Shoot, I would even report them to the better business bureau saying that their business practices are questionable. It makes you wonder who really polices PR agencies if there is such a thing.

Just know that obviously you create content that others want but if they want it they would contact you and hire you to help them create a way of sharing information that is informative.

I am so sorry this happened to you! : /

Anita Campbell · 1 year ago

I am so sorry this happened to you, Brent, because you deserve every bit of credit.

What I don't understand is the point of the exercise. They plagiarized your article (and I will give them the benefit of the doubt during this season that it was due to "inexperience" on the part of the person sending the email). But for what purpose? It wasn't even a coherent pitch with a call to action. Bizarre.

Let's hope the management at this firm has the goodness to come over and apologize to you -- and better guidance to the rep who sent this out on the proper way to do things.

Best,
Anita

learyb · 1 year ago

Hi Anita,

Thanks for the kind words. And I'm hoping this is all due to a lack of experience on the part of the person sending the email out, which is the reason I did not include a name in my post. And the lack of a coherent pitch and call to action would seem to agree with our hope this is the case.

Let's hope their managment straightens this out. Thanks again!

Peggy Duncan · 12 months ago

This is what I was thinking too. It wasn't a pitch so I don't understand the purpose in the first place. This is just another reason to learn how to do your own PR. For a ton of money, these agencies use a lot of spray and pray methods to sometimes luck up on publicity for their clients. Keep us posted on this.

iluvblackwomen · 1 year ago

Brent what can we do ???

learyb · 1 year ago

Hey Martin,

You're doing it already with your comments and re-tweets. Thank you!

iluvblackwomen · 1 year ago

ok just checking cause we ready to roll like John except virtually you know

john · 1 year ago

That is so F'd up. You want me to send someone over to their offices to handle this? Don't make me get ol'school ghetto on that "arse". I may be a civilized business owner today, but I still got thug love in the veins... LMAO.

learyb · 1 year ago

Thanks John. But I don't think there's a need for any bodily harm. :-) We'll just use social media to handle this one.

Thanks again!

JB · 1 year ago

This was such a sad case of Plagiarism. What were they thinking! PR Agencies will definitely take a Hit for this one. I have warned my Facebook and Twitter readers and have put your blog post on Digg blast. You sure we can hire someone from the Johnnie Cochran agency to hit these folks with a law suite?

All the best

JB

Patti D. · 12 months ago

Shame on L&S! I dicovered the link to this post on Twitter and my comment is: Integrity along with ethical practice is followed for the long-term by long-term customers.
Lack of thee above is ALWAYS discovered and poor practice provides short-term customers. A PR firm should be aware of the power of social media and the means in which it can come back to haunt.

Thank you for sharing your story, for bringing to light the infringment and for stating your feelings in a constructive and proffessional manner.

Nicholas Chase · 12 months ago

Chris,

Excellent in-depth post! You really stir up the waters with you insights. Hope to see you speaking on Social Media at #ASW09 in Las Vegas. My donation plan was killed by Attorney's for local hospitals.

They 'stated', " It would cause a stampede of recipients, and what if you ran out of gift cards?"

On to the next plan.. reading Richard Branson's new book "Business Stripped Bare". A fun and easy read so far, he is direct and successful, so I'm learning the ways of business after being a broadcast systems design engineer and senior project manager at Google.

You rock Chris, keep the insights coming, and thanks for being a man with a sense of humor as well, it is much needed in this current environment.

Respectfully,

Nicholas Chase
www.twitter.com/nachase
http://donotreadthisblogunless.blogspot.com/

Murray Izenwasser · 12 months ago

This is truly a shame, but before we go branding the entire organization as liars, cheats, and plagiarists, please remember, that the organization is comprised of individuals; people, in other words. I had a similar situation about 8 years ago, when one of my colleagues (who had a great body of work and reputation) at the 50 person agency I was working for at the time wrote a white paper, that was a great thought-piece. Like a lot of other people that had client responsibility, I sent it along to my largest client, as it echoed some conversations we had been having.

A few days later after our weekly meeting, he said to me "I read the white paper you sent. It's amazing to me how much a lot of agencies sound alike with the information they are creating." I didn't think that much about it, until I was on the plane home that evening. "Hmmm," I thought, "what did he mean by that?"

Well, it came out that the entire white paper was plagiarized from another agency. I was the one, of course, that had to call up my client and apologize.

Chances are, it's one specific person at L&S that did this. The question remains, however, how are they going to handle this PR 'incident?' Brent, have you heard from them yet? Any mea culpas?

BTW, our management team didn't fire the guy like I wanted them to. I left the agency a few months later.

James S · 11 months ago

I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website to find duplicated content. To me it has a number of benefits over copyscape and copyrightspot:

1. it's automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who's republished my articles on the web.

2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.

3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.

4. it's a free service as opposed the "per page" cost of copyscape/copysentry.

jer979 · 10 months ago

I guessed I missed this in the holiday season, so glad that Valeria pointed it out today. I tweeted and will re-blog. This type of behavior needs to be punished severely.