EXCLUSIVE: RLM PR Tapped by HARO for Public Relations Counsel

The Bad Pitch Blog is pleased to leak announce tell you that Peter Shankman’s crowd sourcing secret weapon, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), has retained RLM Public Relations as their public relations agency of record. Bad Pitch Blog co-author, Richard Laermer, is RLM PR’s CEO.

Bad Pitch Blog and HARO "go together like peas and carrots" – if the peas and carrots in question are piss and vinegar. So we are pleased to be the first to note this loose connection in an anti-news release format. Both Bad Pitch Blog and HARO take a new, unconventional approach to achieving better media relations at all costs.

RLM has been hard at work in making HARO a household name – securing coverage within the first 10 days of the relationship in Forbes magazine and online publication AllBusiness.

From Forbes:

“If the reporter is asking about cruise ships and you send him information on cabins in the woods, you're gone. Your domain is blocked, and you're not coming back on HARO," Shankman says. "And if I'm really in a bad mood and the reporter's really angry, I just might out you in my next edition."

That’s our kind of consequence.

HARO has quickly increased membership since Shankman created it in 2007. Now at 100,000 members, HARO has excelled at doing more than simply connecting journalists and sources…free of charge for both parties.

HARO: “Kind of a Big(ger) Deal”
Bad Pitch Blog spoke with HARO Chief Operating Officer Thom Brodeur about the decision to work with RLM.

“It’s time to change the dialogue around HARO,” says Brodeur. “We’re more than a matchmaking service for media, PR people and sources. We’re a social media company with a business model, revenue and profits. How many Web 2.0 companies can make the same claim?

"Take Facebook, where HARO was created. We’re able to help small and medium sized businesses more efficiently and effectively than Facebook. We offer advertising opportunities to these companies, which has changed the game for some of them. And we provide them with a valuable PR/marketing service. There’s so much more here than people realize and we need someone to tattoo this message on the backside of the industry.”

When asked to comment on this new concept of "getting ink," Laermer declined, quickly bridging into key message points and hoping aloud that Shankman won’t ask his PR counsel to jump out of an airplane.

Posted, tongue firmly in cheek, by @prblog.