Jeremy Pepper Likes to Eat His Own Kind

PR guy Jeremy Pepper somewhat runs in the same circles as I do and I would consider him an acquaintance, and frankly he’s always been nice.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk (http://thomashawk.com/)

But this week he decided to jump on the I'm-so-important-and-hot-and-need-to-tell-the-world-who-sucks bandwagon that has the likes of Gina Trapani, Chris Anderson and others riding along. Given Anderson leads the pack, not bad company I suppose (don’t get me wrong, I really do like and respect Anderson, but his blacklist post was a crappy move, buy hey, maybe he was just having a shitty day that day).

Whatever happened to being a decent human being? This week Pepper took it upon himself to call out a colleague of mine who works on my team, is fairly new to PR and is a rising star. Pepper published a post on Tumblr calling my colleague out for an email pitch she sent him, which in his opinion, was giving him too much information on an "embargoed" announcement, and (in his opinion) for writing a pitch that was much too long (yeah, yeah, I get it, nobody likes long emails. Hell, I hate email and hope to stop using it someday).

I'm not going to get into the embargo debate because that's not what my post is about. Of course, I'm more than happy to do so offline with anyone, anytime because I have strong opinions on using embargoes as a PR tactic, and the different types and uses of embargoes.

Pepper’s actions are akin to a Businessweek reporter not liking how a Wall Street Journal reporter wrote a story, so he writes and posts an article dissing the Wall Street Journal reporter's writing style and approach to the story. It’s unprofessional.

Pepper was obviously highly annoyed at her email approach and felt she made a PR 101 blunder. But what’s funny is that another PR blogger actually direct messaged my boss on Twitter complimenting her on her approach and pitch. Funny, huh? Yeah.  And there were quite a few others who she contacted who were interested and asked her for the link and password to the embargoed video, whitepaper and additional information.