Celebrating Three Years of the “Bad Pitch Blog”

[Bad Pitch founders: CEO of RLM PR, Richard Laermer and Director of Marketing Communications at FRCH Design Worldwide Kevin Dugan]

As my co-editor Jason previously mentioned, a PR industry blog staple, the Bad Pitch Blog, celebrated it’s third anniversary last night at Under the Volcano in Manhattan.

Founders Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan were on hand to celebrate with a crowd that included Flatiron Communications founder and Publicity Club of New York president Peter Himler, former PRWeek executive editor and current WeightWatchers.com Managing Editor Elly Trickett, Marketing Begins at Home blogger and PR pro David Parmet, PR News editor Courtney Barnes, Converseon’s Constantin Basturea as well as a host of others.

This PRnewser was able to take a brief moment to catch up with both founders amid the crowd, to ask them a few questions, including how the blog came about. Said Laermer, jokingly, “I found Kevin out of the gutter and said, ‘I must help him!’”

Back to a serious answer, Dugan said, “I started blogging in 2002, Richard was ubiquitous with [his book] ‘Full Frontal PR,’ so I asked to interview him, that’s why we first connected. A little over three years ago, I was tired of all of the media that call us out and lump us all into one bad pitch. And I came up with the idea of the Bad Pitch Blog and I said ‘he’s the guy’ and I was right because more people know me now for the Bad Pitch Blog than know me for [my other blog] Strategic PR.”

Laermer said Dugan was really smart about it, in saying, “‘couldn’t we just, in a very cool way, show people what they’re doing wrong’ and just put it out there and really be educational.”

“We started with a bang,” said Laermer, “because we had so many people send us things. [BusinessWeek's] Steve Baker was one of the first to send us things. Lots of journalists started sending us things. And they weren’t sending us things to be mean. I remember election day 2006, a woman from the Washington Times writes me and said, ‘somebody knows I’m a political reporter and writes me about their product at 6 o’clock on election day, what do I do?’ And I thought, ‘Oh my god, people have to really get their act together.’”

When asked how PR can stay competitive in tough times, Dugan replied simply, “Do you best work.”

“Right now things are very crazy,” he said, “and people say ‘what the heck are we going to do?’ And ‘do your best work’ is always the right answer, because if it doesn’t work out [at your current job] if you’re doing your best work you’re going to land somewhere else.”

Adding in his own two cents, Laermer exclaimed, “So much of what this is about is educating clients. When clients feel like somebody is taking care of them, and not in a BS way, but in a way where they really understand what the value is in everything they do. It’s less about ‘the results’ and more about making people understand why you’re doing what your doing. We’re educators, because we’re out there everyday, that’s our job, and that’s all we got.”

[Looking to connect with someone you met last night? Check out the Twitter stream.]

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