Throughout my PR occupation, I’ve worked with a lot of dirtbags. ( Weirdly, most of my past clients keep saying the same thing about their past PR rep, but c’mon, they must be talking about someone else. ) Do n’t get me wrong, I’ve met and worked with amazing, brilliant people with impeccable moral fiber, too. In fact, I’ve worked more with the latter than the original.
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But in my business, you might expect to run into dirtbags, just like criminal defense attorneys are likely going to work with criminals. Those are the folks who need our service.  ,
Often but not always, the people who request problems communications have helped do anything unethical, illegal, or dangerous, so our market is at least partially self-selecting. It is what it is.
I’ve repped booze brands and gambling brands — hey, I’m the creator and executive producer of ( the God-awful )” National Lampoon’s Strip Poker” titles! I’ve also had dirtbags treated like the later Al Goldstein as clients! ( Please do n’t Google him if you’re on a work computer. ) I say this not to talk —’ cause let’s face it, none of it’s for bragging about — but to build my vantage point and category credibility: I’m truly qualified to detect dirtbags.
The biggest dirtbags I’ve always worked with were in the monetary magazine sector, by a VERY large percentage.
Certainly what you expected, eh?
Given the target audience for our website, I’m inclined to assume that many of you will listen to economic newsletters to assist you with portfolio management. My father subscribed to a financial magazine for a few hundred dollars and followed its tips. He ran away from the guy he liked and found him.
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However, working with this particular business was eye-opening, but not in a positive manner.
I wo n’t mention it by name. All I’ll suggest is that he’s with a large company with several different “financial specialists” within their habitat.  ,
I repped a member of their family.
Behind the scenes, the business is completely forthright about its purpose: They are NOT in the economic business! Otherwise, they’re in the printing industry. And given the price of their ezines, they probably make more money per expression than anyone else, even more than the highest-paid man at the New York Times.  ,
It’s a fascinating company unit.
Of course, if you’re really in the printing business, it’s way more crucial to offer a gazillion notifications than to make appropriate financial predictions. And if you think about it logically, if they were actually the financial wizards they claim to be, they would n’t be investing in newsletters, they’d be investing in stocks!
They silly down their suggestions. Because they’ve learned they can offer more mailings this way, they’ve given their writers the instruction to write at the middle school levels. You’re especially told to write little words and short paragraphs. ( Their editorial handbook literally says” AVOID FANCY WORDS” — all caps. )  ,
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Their newsletters usually follow a very specific design: A captivating story, followed by some kind of practical advice, and it’s all explained in an easy-to-read way.
To be fair to this business, its editor guidebook does caution its authors against deceiving visitors. Like they proudly say later in their book, they do n’t have to trick readers to sell newsletters.  ,
But instead, they often invent some kind of plagiarist, fringe scenario to taunt their audience. For instance, the man I repped was bright and economically shrewd, but one of the ad campaigns billed him as one of the world’s stupidest, most terrible investors until a clever man gave him a specific formula. ( So on and so forth. ) It was absolutely horrible, dreadful branding for PR purposes, but it made splendid sense for the company’s business model.
They mostly sell outlier scenarios — things that probably wo n’t happen, but if they did, WOWWEE!  , — that kind of pitch. They defend this by pointing out that, in addition to being viewed as fabulist, all those predictions from the early 1930s about the world being on the verge of its greatest war ever, the world would soon be on the verge of a nuclear weapon attack in Asia. But as we all know, World War II happened.  ,
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So who’s to say]fill-in-the-blank ] wo n’t happen either?
You must not be interested in receiving a financial newsletter if you enjoy speculating about the market and find it entertaining. Their newsletters are undoubtedly entertaining as hell. Furthermore, I’m NOT saying that every financial newsletter comes from unethical people! There are lots of good ones out there, too.
But if you’re paying for a financial service that sounds suspiciously like what I’m describing, please do your due diligence. You have the right to use your money, and you can do anything you want.