the(new)mediaslut

This week has been a pretty torrid week for Smartbrain when it comes to his love/hate relationship with the spawn of the devil, sorry, cute PR consultants, who vie for his attention, but often not in the way they should.

Early this week, an anonymous PR company, hereafter known as H contacted Smartbrain asking him to do a freelance job for one of their clients, client R. Smartbrain ignored the email as the last time he did the job for R, he was not paid any of the five hundred pounds promised. Plus, the job was far from amicable as R-R was, how shall one put it, very slow to respond to email for the months leading up to the deadline and then suddenly very, very demanding when they noticed that the deadline for the story was imminent.

Also this week, H managed to really upset Smartbrain (well, their other half did - all annoying PR companies have another hat to wear when they need to avoid “conflicts of interest” on paper) when they insisted on a one on one interview with their client.

Smartbrain declined the one on one, saying that he would prefer the general session later that day alongside the other journos. The saccharine sweet PR called his phone (note to self, change number and keep it secret) and insisted it was special and worth Smartbrain getting up at the crack of dawn for an early morning interview.

“It’s not that bad, high fuel costs mean that traffic is much less clogged up these days,” the sweet voice of the devil said, reassuringly.

The last time PR H did this was for a certain IT company, known anonymously as “the Evil Empire” (wonder who they could be?) which had a very interesting topic, mice, which obviously demanded a one on one interview arrangement.

It was an evening interview and Smartbrain got there early, in time for the last 10 minutes of the general press conference and Q&A. After firing off a few pointed questions to the acolytes of the Evil Empire, he was led off to the one on one where his questions were rebutted with the comment, “If you weren’t late you would have heard that….” from an annoyed spokesperson who was under the impression that Smartbrain was late for the previous session rather than early for his.

“I was not late. I was told to be here at 4.30 by H,” he replied.

Next Wednesday, Smartbrain hopes that their client, a certain chip company that is being sued left right and centre on anti-trust grounds known only as I corporation, had better have something that’s worth it or Smartbrain will unveil who this PR H is on this blog.

Next episode: Company O and how they told their client Smartbrain was going to Delhi without telling Smartbrain, or his editor.