Gary’s brand did not suffer because I criticized him; it suffered because he sent a bad pitch. His company sent 500 pitch emails, and 200 people responded positively. I’d be curious to know why the other 300 people did not respond. Some probably because they were not interested, busy, or maybe like you, did not like his last paragraph. Surely his email did more to damage his reputation than anything I did in writing a post about the email.

I could have just ignored the email; I could have just deleted it. But if I had, there would have been no opportunity for Gary to know I did not like the email his employee sent me. Or perhaps for many other people to voice their concerns. Isn’t open discussion about issues what social media is all about, the opportunity to discuss what we think about people’s and companies actions?

I think there’s a big difference between giving unconstructive criticism and giving constructive criticism. I think it is perfectly acceptable to give your opinions about issues you are passionate about. I’m really passionate about the marketing concept, and the idea that marketers listen to their customers and audiences when building a product or marketing campaign.

Regarding your take aways:

Would you send an email to someone promoting a product without first reading their blog? I think there’s a whole body of discussion that’s occurred in the last ten years when it comes to building an effective blogger relations campaign. One big take away I’ve learned from people like Dan Gillmor, Shel Holtz, Stowe Boyd, Neville Hobson, Todd Defren, Robert Scoble, Susan Getgood, Chris Andersen, Gina Trapani and more is that you should read a journalist/blogger’s stuff before pitching them. It’s seen as common courtesy.

You are right engagement has problems with scalability, it is tough to build the infrastructure and resources to be able to engage, but if we don’t, then surely our alternative is advertising and interruption marketing techniques. Just because connecting and building relationships takes time doesn’t mean we don’t do it. Gary’s company is at least a $50 million company according to reports I’ve seen from his interviews with people like CNN; surely his company can afford to hire a few extra people to manage engagement for community management or media relations? Hasn’t the ROI of social media been good for Gary’s company? Robert Scoble at Microsoft, Jeremy Alliare at Macromedia, Richard Binhammer at Dell and you, as one of the leaders in the online community management movement have demonstrated that engagement works, the strategy is sound. Why would we abandon it now?

Interesting question about agency successful rates with personal pitches and bad pitches, we’d have to ask the industry.