Christie Communications: A Cautionary Tale |
A Helpful Guide to Christie Communications,and Why I Think You Should Never Hire ThemUnder Any Circumstances.Perhaps you are doing a search for Christie Communications in California or Gillian Christie right now because you are considering hiring that company as your PR and marketing company. Before you hire them, I recommend that you read my story to decide if that's really a good idea. Along with my story, I am including actual examples of work that Christie Communications did for me below, so that you can decide for yourself how awful their work really is. You won't find any of this work in the portfolio on their web site! But this is what you might get if you actually hire them, because that's what I got. IMPORTANT NOTE: This site has nothing at all to do with a similarly named but completely unrelated e-learning development company in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Christie Communications Ltd.
Two Horrifying Events That Made Me Panic And Forced Me to Fire Christie Communications Immediately
1. Christie Communications sent out a press release about my company without getting approval in advance. Only AFTER the press release had already been distributed, did they send us a copy of it. In this press release, they said that my company was based in an entirely different city, and they misused a word. What kind of a public relations and marketing company sends out press releases without approval? What kind of public relations and marketing company doesn't even know what city their client is operating from? What kind of public relations and marketing company doesn't adequately edit releases before they send them, checking for wrong words, misspellings, or typos? I'll tell you what kind of a company does that. Christie Communications.
Maybe you're thinking, "Misspelled word, big deal!" Think for a moment of who you are sending your press releases to. You are sending them to people who work with words for a living. They care about spelling, and grammar, and whether you use the right word. What if you hire Christie Communications, and you don't have a background in journalism, or you aren't a really a great copy editor or speller? You might not catch potential typos and misspellings in their work, and they might be sent out to dozens or hundreds of journalists. Do you want to be known as the company that can't get the spelling right on their own press release? I sure don't, because I think it makes me look stupid. And don't forget that they might not even give you the chance to approve it before they send it out! After all, that's what they did with my release. Can a press release still be effective with mistakes and misspellings in it? Sure. Journalists are not spelling and grammar Nazis. If the story is good, they can overlook those things. But mistakes and misspellings still matter, because they leave an overall impression of a company that doesn't care enough about details to even spell check their work before they send it out. Maybe you're thinking, "Wrong city, who cares?" Imagine for a moment that you are a journalist writing a story and you notice the press release mentions a different city than where the company is actually located. Suddenly, all of the facts in the press release are suspect. If they can't get the city right, are the product details correct? Will the firm give me good information if I have followup questions? Or will that be wrong too? No journalist wants to publish a story, only to find out later that there are factual errors in it. One final point. Just to be clear, we have an email from Gretchen Heine that says that Jimmy Ta will be sending us a draft to approve before the release goes out. Then we did not receive another email from Jimmy until AFTER the release had already been distributed. So there is no way that we could have approved it, because we didn't ever see it before it went out. That's a big no no, Jimmy!
2. Christie Communications sent me a "Press Kit" that was so badly designed and riddled with errors, that it looked to me as if a middle school student had created it for a school project.
See the press kit in full sized glory for yourself. When Gillian Christie was pitching me, trying to get my business, she told me all about how instead of just being a public relations firm, they were a full service public relations and marketing firm. She claimed that her company had the capability of designing packaging, and even doing entire corporate branding makeovers. But here is what Christie Communications sent me that I was supposed to use as a press kit to take to a trade show. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the design work is good. Maybe you like default fonts and woodgrain backgrounds! Well, would you say that it would be important for the text beside each photo to be an accurate description of the correct product? I know that I would. But Christie Communications didn't even get that right. The text next to the bottom photo is for a completely different product. That's why I was both appalled and infuriated to see the work. I had been on vacation when they initially sent the work, and everyone else at the office had already been parading it around, making fun of it while I was gone. One of my employees forwarded it to me and wrote, "Could they have done a worse job with this?" Another one of my other employees showed it to me and literally begged me to let her redesign it so that we wouldn't send the kit out to anyone. It was frankly humiliating, because I was the guy who had picked Christie Communications. All of my employees knew that it was expensive. The press kit was so amateurish that it was clear to everyone who worked for me that I had made the worst possible choice in picking an agency. Do you think I am exaggerating? As a reality check, I forwarded the work to a couple of friends of mine who formerly worked at a nationally known PR and Advertising firm, and who have high level marketing jobs at large companies now. I also forwarded it to my own father, who was the marketing director of a Fortune 500 company before he retired. All of them said that I should definitely fire Christie Communications right away. To quote one of the responses I got:
Gillian Christie's excuse for what happened. During the conference call when I fired Christie Communications, I brought up these issues and told them that I believed their work was unacceptably bad, and that there were only two possibilities of what had happened.
1. They were not capable of doing work that meets my minimum quality standards. I didn't see how this was possible, because I had seen work that they had done for other companies, and what they showed me in those cases looked fine.
2. They were capable of doing good work, but they sent me unacceptably bad work anyway. This was actually worse, because it meant that they either didn't take me seriously as a client, or they thought that I was too small to matter, or maybe even thought I was too dumb to know the difference.
In either case, I had no choice but to fire them, because I had already given them $12,500. It would be far too expensive to keep paying them and take a chance to see if it would get any better. I would always feel like I couldn't trust them to do anything correctly unless I personally spent a lot of time on it, which defeats the whole purpose of hiring an agency instead of doing the work myself. At that point, I said, the only thing that we needed to discuss was how much of my money they were going to send back, and when I should expect it, or if we were going to have to hire an arbitrator to work it out. The silence on the other end of the line during the conference call was deafening, as they say. After a pause, Gillian finally spoke up and said that she had been out of the office during that period, so she had not been able to personally oversee the work that was done for my company. There had been a death in her family, and she was leaving for the funeral later that day, but she would get with the bookkeeper before she got on the plane. I was in an uncomfortable position, because I realized that I probably seemed like a complete jerk firing her right after someone in her family died. But the truth was that I had already sent her a large amount of money, and she was going to continue sending even larger bills if I didn't act immediately. It was quickly about to get very, very expensive. I didn't feel that I could afford to lose thousands more dollars and risk getting more bad work. Since Gillian mentioned the funeral, I told her that she didn't have to worry about dealing with the bookkeeper the same day, before she left for the funeral, and that she could just take care of it after she got back. That turned out to be a big mistake, as you will see. A couple of important points to make about our final conference call. 1. Gillian never for one moment defended the quality of her work during the conference call. (How could she, really?) Her only excuse was that she hadn't been in the office to personally oversee it. She has somewhere around 20 employees! Are you telling me that none of them can do a decent job if she doesn't personally oversee their work? What kind of a company is that? (Although I can tell you that her bookkeeper works very well without personal supervision, because the bills always came to the correct city, and quickly.) 2. Gillian said on the conference call, with her own employees as witnesses, that we wouldn't have to worry about dealing with an arbitrator because she didn't want me to leave with a bad taste in my mouth, because that's not what her company was all about. Well, you can probably guess what happened next. She completely disappeared for several weeks, and didn't answer our emails or return calls asking when she was going to return our money, in spite of what she said during the conference call. When she finally answered one of my employee's emails, it was to tell us that she would not return any money after all. At that point, I wrote her a stern email demanding my money. She ignored it, so I began calling on the phone, unable to get through to her. Next, she sent us what I would call a "screw you" letter by FedEx telling us that we should choose "5 mediators in Santa Barbara you feel are appropriate" for her to choose from, and that according to her contract "Client acknowledges that the initial payment is nonrefundable and earned upon execution of this agreement." and that WE were in breach of the contract because we hadn't fired her in writing! It might technically be true that Gillian Christie and Christie Communications isn't legally required to return my money. (Although only an arbitrator will decide for sure.) But she said (or at least implied) during the conference call that she would indeed return at least some portion of the money. Call Jimmy Ta or Gretchen Heine and ask them if I am lying. They were two of the people on the conference call. To quote the Christie Communications web site: "Always Do Right. This Will Gratify Some People and Astonish The Rest." Mark Twain, 1901 I would argue that it is wrong to keep any of my money at all in this circumstance, because the work was so truly bad. I believe that any reasonable person who did such terrible work and who had a sense of right and wrong would apologize, refund the money, and move on. I understand that shit happens sometimes. And I understand that it probably happened because there was a death in Gillian's family during the period I was working with her. But it isn't right for the "shit" that happened to be the work that I paid thousands of dollars for. Would you just let it go if it were your $12,500? (If so, send me a check for $12,500, please. Payer acknowledges that the initial payment is nonrefundable and earned upon execution of this agreement. Ha ha! Get it? It's a contract joke! Seriously though, send me the money.)
Questions you are probably asking, after reading my story.
1. Is this guy an idiot who doesn't know how PR and marketing works? Only you can decide if I'm an idiot or not, because even idiots think they are pretty smart. But as far as public relations and marketing goes, I do indeed have at least a basic understanding of how things work. I have a master's degree in international journalism. I have worked on both sides of the tracks when it comes to the media. I was a magazine editor for several years, and I was the director of public relations for a small Internet company back in the 1990s. I did all my own PR for the first 9 years after founding my own company, from 1998 until 2007. My company has been written about in Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, This Old House, and many other national publications that you have probably heard of.
2. Is this guy a know-it-all jerk? Someone who thinks he is so smart that no PR and marketing company could ever do a good enough job that he could ever be happy? This is a good question, and one that I would probably be thinking if I were to find this page during a search for the Christie Communications site. You know how sometimes you'll read product reviews on Amazon, and it's completely clear that the person who bought the product had unrealistic expectations and that there is nothing wrong with the product itself? I don't think that's the case here. I later hired a different PR firm that I am thrilled with, and I would recommend to anyone. (Well, not just ANYONE. This PR firm mostly deals with companies in my industry.) I am not mentioning their name here, because they wisely don't want to have anything to do with a "Christie Communications Sucks" type of web site. In my further self defense, I would point out that I have also been working with the same media buying company that does all of our print advertising for more than 5 years, and I rave about this company at every opportunity. I wouldn't consider myself a high maintenance kind of guy at all. But like I have said before, decide for yourself!
Still thinking about hiring Christie Communications after reading all of this? So you've read my diatribe, and you think I'm a disgruntled nutjob. It's okay, don't feel bad. I won't hold it against you. In fact, I can still be helpful to you, even if you ignore my advice to stay clear of this company. Because I'm going to tell you about the contract that Gillian Christie or someone else at Christie Communications will probably send to you, so that you will be prepared to strike out certain clauses and won't be left hanging like I was if something goes terribly, awfully wrong. The Arbitration Clause When I saw the arbitration clause, I thought, "Cool! Someone who likes to avoid lawyers like me! What a great idea!" Then I saw the part where arbitration had to take place in Santa Barbara, California. I thought that it would be no big deal though, because hey, I've never had a conflict with another service provider after being in business for 10 years, so what's the big deal? Boy was that a mistake! If ever there was a guy who wishes he could hire a lawyer and sue someone, then that guy is me. Be sure to strike out the arbitration clause if you choose to do business with Christie Communications, in spite of my warnings. The "When you send me money, I can take it and never perform the work and you're just out of luck, buddy," Clause. After Gillian Christie dodged our calls and emails for an extended period followed by an email that said she wasn't going to send a check, I sent her an angry-but-polite email demanding my money back within a week. Remember, this is the same person who had said several weeks earlier in a conference call with several witnesses that it "wouldn't be necessary" for me to hire an arbitrator. Christie Communications wanted me to be satisfied, and we would be able to "work something out" about returning the money I had already paid for services that had not yet been performed. Instead of sending me my money back, she sent a letter that explained the clause in her contract that says, "Client acknowledges that the initial payment is nonrefundable and earned upon execution of this agreement." That's a fancy lawyer way of saying that you can send her a check for $12,500, she can cash it and keep it, and she never has to do a lick of work if she doesn't feel like it. Be sure to strike out this sentence if you ever make the mistake of signing a contract with Gillian Christie and Christie Communications. Because who says that the same thing that happened to me can't also happen to you?
UPDATE: October 2, 2008 After calling every weekday for several weeks with no returned call or reply, I received this email today.
This was my response:
UPDATE: October 9, 2008 After continuing to call every weekday since the last update with still no progress in getting through to anyone about getting a refund, I received this certified letter today from Christie Communications, accusing me of libel and defamation!
Click here to read the full sized letter. I think that they must be confused, because libel and defamation both relate to false statements. A true statement, on the other hand, by its very nature cannot be libelous or defamatory. Gillian, if you think something on this site is inaccurate, please tell me specifically what you think is incorrect or untrue! Is that not the actual press kit that your company designed for us? Is that not the press release that your company sent out that said we were in the wrong city? Is that not the email that you actually sent me, and my reply? I don't understand what "emerging defamation claim" means. How exactly would it emerge? UPDATE: October 10, 2008 Here is the full response to the certified letter.
UPDATE: October 20, 2008 Still unable to talk to Gillian Christie at Christie Communications. I haven't been calling daily anymore, but I have been attempting to call at least once each week. She has not accepted or returned the calls. I did, however, receive an impressive letter from an attorney this morning. It's difficult to summarize, so I'll just let you read it for yourself.
Click here to read the complete letter. The letter said that I had 5 days to respond, but it came via US Mail, and arrived on the 5th day! Wouldn't that have been convenient if it had taken an extra day in the mail, so someone could claim that I didn't respond quickly enough? This was the response that I faxed back to the attorney.
I will try to include a recap of my telephone conversation with the attorney later. I spoke to him when I called to confirm that he received my faxed response to his letter. UPDATE: October 21, 2008 After sending my response by fax, I called the attorney on Oct. 20 to make sure that he received the fax. He confirmed that he received it. We had a conversation after that, because I had some questions about the letter.The conversation went very quickly, so I am going to do a recap as best I can remember. If I have made a mistake in my recollection, please let me know so that I can correct this account of our conversation. I am willing to publish the attorney's account of our conversation here verbatim, should it differ from my account, and should he wish to send it. The attorney said that he felt that this web site is "clearly defamatory and libelous" and that the damages to his client were increasing as each day goes by. I said that I have been trying to get in contact with Gillian for weeks. He said that it was pointless to talk to her if it was about getting any kind of money back, because the contract between our companies was very clear and that the money was non refundable, period. I asked to arrange a direct telephone conversation with Gillian, allowing the attorney to be included on the call so that we could negotiate an end to our dispute. I don't remember the exact words, but the attorney said that would not take place. This offer still stands, by the way. I also said that if Christie Communications believed anything on this web site to be false, that they should tell me specifically and give me a list of inaccuracies. The attorney's response was that it was not their responsibility to give me any list. The attorney made an offer that if I were to immediately take down this web site and stop asking for a refund and end communications with Christie Communications and stop writing about them, Christie Communications would drop their demand for mediation and/or arbitration and consider the dispute finished. I'm sure that's not exactly how he put it, but that is the gist of how I understood the offer. Basically, take down the site and go away and stop asking for a refund, and they would go away too. I said that I didn't believe that the web site was related in any way to the contract between our companies, but they seemed to think that it was related. So I asked, if one party doesn't think that something is subject to arbitration or mediation, then who makes the decision that it is? He told me that under California law, if the two parties can't agree if a subject falls under an arbitration clause, then an arbitrator would make the decision of whether or not it is subject to arbitration. Doesn't that explanation sound like it came straight from the novel, Catch 22? (Once again, that's the way I understood the explanation. I am not an attorney, so it is likely that I didn't understand every intricacy of what he told me. I am explaining it to you, dear reader, based on my best understanding and memory of what happened during the phone call, and my love of that brilliant Joseph Heller novel.) I also pointed out during the phone call that if they thought the web site was libelous, then they were free to sue me directly for it, because it wasn't related to the contract, so it wasn't subject to arbitration. I made an offer to Christie Communications through the attorney that I would be willing to consider the dispute resolved if I were to receive $7,500 of my money back, and that I would also be willing to take down this web site if we could resolve the dispute under those terms. He said that he would give the offer to his client. He also said not to expect a positive response, because his client had already given him instructions that she was not going to return "a single penny." (I believe that was his exact phrase.) I personally thought that I was being generous with my offer. I'm not even asking for an apology letter anymore, even though I think I truly deserve that too! When we ended the call, I said that I would call the attorney back on Wednesday and let him know of my decision about whether or not I would accept mediation that includes this web site as the subject of our negotiations. My thoughts after receiving the latest letter and having the conversation with the attorney are that the actions taken by Christie Communications don't seem to indicate that they are eager to directly negotiate or discuss the issue of whether or not I deserve a refund. They only thing they seem to be interested in at all is this web site itself, which tells the story of my experience with Christie Communications. If they don't believe that I deserve a refund, then why would they care about this web site? If it is so clear cut that I don't deserve a refund, then why not just let the web site continue to exist? If I am so stupid and unreasonable for expecting a refund, and the work that they did for me is perfectly acceptable, then why should they care if I display it here for the world to see? It would be clear to anyone who reads this site that I am an idiot, wouldn't it? Alternatively, if Christie Communications feels that there is some type of inaccuracy on this web site, why wouldn't they point it out specifically, so that I could consider their request and update the web site, if they are indeed correct? I'm a reasonable guy. If I made an error on the web site, I'd like to know what that error is. A completely vague claim accusing me of libel and defamation without any specifics about what is inaccurate seems far fetched to me. Why wouldn't they simply sue me for libel, if I already said in writing more than once that this web site is not related to our contract, which frees them from any arbitration and mediation clause, as I understand it? Could it be because there are no substantial inaccuracies on this site? I suppose that only a mediator or arbitrator is going to be able to decide answers to these types of questions in the end, because Christie Communications seems unwilling to speak or negotiate with me directly, even with their own attorney present. Once again, that offer still stands. Why not just talk with me, Gillian? I'm not a screamer. Ask your attorney if I was polite or not on the phone! I will now have to make a decision on whether to allow the subject of this web site to be included in mediation, or if I should argue to an arbitrator that the web site is not subject to arbitration. My personal belief is that their strategy is to make me spend money now, in the hopes that I will drop the issue and go away. Am I someone who cares about the principle of an issue and will move forward even at a great expense and tiny risk that I could lose? Or am I someone who simply gives up when he thinks he might have to spend a substantial amount of money to stand up for his beliefs? Only time will tell the answer to these types of questions. UPDATE: October 22, 2008 I faxed in my response to the latest lawyer letter today. Read it for yourself!
UPDATE: October 23, 2008 Today I received a new letter from Noll Associates. Below is the letter, and my reply.
Click here to read the full letter. This was my response.
UPDATE: October 27, 2008 Received a letter in the mail. This letter is dated before the negotiations of the last few days, so I won't bother with a response here for now.
Click here to read the entire letter. I also received a fax today, with another counter offer. Below is the letter, and my reply.
Click here to read entire fax. Here was my response.
UPDATE: October 29, 2008 No response to my last letter so far. I sent this to the attorney.
UPDATE: November 10, 2008 More letters last week. I hired an attorney, just to get a reality check. The attorney made some very good points that I hadn't even considered yet. This one's a two pager.
Response to attorney letter.
My response, via attorney.
To sum it all up, no progress. Does this story remind you of anything? Imagine how much it would cost if those guys had lawyers! I personally prefer thinking of Winston Churchill, when he said, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense." But then again, of course I'd think that, right? UPDATE: January 7, 2009 There were some updates right around Christmas, and I'm just getting around to putting them up. Here is the lastest round of Lawyer vs. Lawyer. Otherwise known as, "What's the most expensive way possible to avoid simply talking to each other?"
The response. Via attorney. Naturally.
A few weeks later, in early 2009, we received this.
So it appears that we might be near a resolution. If this site disappears and the ownership of the domain changes, you can probably guess what happened based on that letter. UPDATE: April 20, 2009 So, what ever happened since January? Basically, nothing. There were a few more letters back and forth, and then there weren't any more responses and I asked my attorney not to bother following up anymore. I am guessing that Christie Communications has reconsidered the entire situation after I dug in my heels and called their bluff about their absurd "libel" claims against me. Could it be that they don't have the money available to make the $5,000 donation to charity? That would be pretty sad if it were true. Naturally, this is all just speculation on my part, because I have no way of knowing. Perhaps they have so much business right now that they can't be bothered with someone as small and annoying as me. Because we all know that PR and advertising agencies all do extremely well during economic slowdowns, right? Or did they decide that no one will ever see this web site anyway, so they'd rather see it left up forever rather than donate any money to charity? Because after all, I am a crazy nut anyway. So it wouldn't make sense to negotiate with me, or donate to a charity when I suggested it. Frankly, I am happy to leave things the way they are now. I much prefer that the site continue to exist forever, to tell others about my experience. UPDATE: May 8, 2009 Could it be that I am not alone in my personal dislike of the work done by Christie Communications? I received this email today. I have no way of verifying if this is legitimate or true.
Real or fake? I'll let you, dear reader, decide for yourself. |
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