Agency Emails & How They Tried To Arm Twist Me

Here is an email exchange I recently had with a Digital Agency / PR firm that wanted me to tweet about their client’s brand.

First email from them on Day 0

Hi Naina,

We are planning a tweet-up for one of our brands X and have identified you as a key influencer on the Twitterverse. Below is the action plan for the same. We are looking for a total of 6 tweets from @NotMyTwitterHandle.

Brand: X
Day 1 Description of Tweet content. (2 tweets)
Day 2 Description of Tweet content. (4 tweets)

Please let us know the monies involved in doing the same.

They had copy-pasted the same email they had sent to another “influencer” – I didn’t want to unnecessarily drag their name into this thread hence have used “@NotMyTwitterHandle”.

My response to them on Day 0

Hello <name>,

Thank you for getting in touch.
We charge INR XYZ + 12.36% service tax per tweet.

Their Second email on Day 0

Thanks for the reply.

Can you please share the all inclusive costs. Also, it would be great if you could share the contact number.

To which I made no response. Not only was I traveling out of the city for more than a few assignments, I didn’t want to get into a negotiation spiral. In retrospect I could have told them that / informed them of the same. This communication gap is clearly a lapse on my part.

I then heard from them directly on Day 15

Thanks for the reply!
We would need final tweets from your end for prior approvals from the client and would request you to share the same with us at the earliest.

Below are the brand guidelines and below is the final flow of the activity:

Brand Guidelines:

OBEJECTIVE : —
TG : Female, 25-44 years
Campaign Idea: —
Execution Thought: #RelevantHashtag
—

Timelines for the entire activity:

Day 1: 2 tweets ( The date for these tweets would be Day 22 from first email exchange – I was being informed of this only now. )
Day 2: 4 tweets ( Day 24 since first email )

Details required from the client:
Hangout URL, the G+ page which the users will need to join in order to be able to join the hangout.

In case of any queries, you can reach me at <mobile number>.

My response on the same day, Day 15

Hello again,

We’ve shared our pricing with you previously.
We’re happy to schedule tweets with designated hashtags depending on your client’s schedule and pre-provided content.
We will also include a hashtag for disclosure that this is a client activity. The hashtag will be #Client
Since we are unable to proceed without a 100% advance, please let me know how to proceed.

Once the payment has been received, and you have provided skeleton tweets to us, we will get back to you with some customizations & take it forward.

I then heard from them on Day 17

Please share your contact numbers with us.

On the same day, my mobile number was shared with them with instructions for them to text me before calling. In my head the activity didn’t look like it was going to take place because I don’t know of many agencies that can pay a 100% advance on such short notice.

On Day 21 I missed a call from them & immediately called back from the middle of my shoot to inform them that I would call them back as soon as possible – maybe a couple of days as I was in the middle of a project. ( Clearly didn’t look like they were sticking to their schedule of starting tweets on Day 22 since first email. )

On Day 23, while I was live-tweeting a day-long event for a client, I received four calls from the above agency over a period of 30 minutes.

I could see the calls as the phone rang but I couldn’t take the calls because, well, I was in the middle of an active event with people on the stage and I was tweeting.

Meanwhile my email also pinged & I’d received an email from them saying the following:

We have been trying to reach her but to no avail.
She told us that she will get back to us but its been 2 days and we have not heard from her side. This is very unprofessional on your part.

Please get in touch with us at <number>.
We need to plan the entire actity with you as it is to happen tomorrow. And also close in on the payment process.

Please raise an invoice on the below details:<name of company and address>

To which I responded:

Thanks <name>. I’m not interested currently. Sorry I should’ve mentioned it earlier. Good luck.

Also after the fourth consecutive call, I texted saying, “I’m live-tweeting an event for a client. Can’t take calls. Sorry.”

To which I received a text in response saying, “Sure. But please do call back once u have time. That e-mail from your end is so not right. Very unprofessional and since we have official confirmation earlier.”

At this point I no longer wanted to pay attention to their emails or calls because clearly they were talking out their ass. Even so, I was doubtful about my previous communication as I clearly couldn’t remember any form of confirmation. So I checked my emails again and was unable to find any confirmation from my side. I even thought that maybe they were mistaking me for someone else. In any case I didn’t, at that point, have the bandwidth to investigate in detail. The live-tweeting event would end close to midnight and there was no way I would be making work calls at that hour.

They also responded to my email the same evening saying:

You should have mentioned this earlier to us. We have received an e-mail earlier from you confirming the activity. An e-mail is a legal confirmation.

When I caught a break next, I responded with the following:

<name>, we indicated interest. There has been no confirmation from our side or from yours. Unless you can see a signed contract that I’m somehow missing. I don’t appreciate being threatened. I would’ve liked to do the activity but I just don’t have the time. Thanks.

To which they responded,

There is not threatening but a reminder of your commitment.
We do understand that you are in a LIVE tweeting event however it would be great if you could call us after the event to clear the doubts.

I saw this email and proceeded to not give any fucks. I decided to focus on the client engagement I was currently present at.

They then proceeded to give another four missed calls. While I was still at a paying client’s event, working.

Unfortunately I couldn’t even put my phone away!

I finally returned after the live-tweeting event at about midnight and because I wanted to sleep peacefully, I had to respond to their last email. My response was this :

<name>, like I said, what commitment? Indication of interest is not the same as commitment.

Where’s the contract?
Where’s the advance?

I don’t comprehend your tone of trying to somehow guilt-shame me at all. Unless you’ve confirmed my name to your client in which case it’s not me who needs a reminder about professionalism.

I’m also letting you know in advance – as a professional courtesy – that I will be forwarding this email exchange as well as screenshots of your related missed phone calls log & threatening texts to others at your organization. And I will also be writing about it on my blog but without identifying any parties. This exchange will make a great case study about unprofessionalism : illusion of professionalism & no concept of boundaries.

I’m responding this late because I just got back from my client engagement that you tried so hard to disrupt and disturb me at. Despite me texting that I can’t take calls, you continued to call me.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t have the time to sign up for this assignment with you.

I hoped this would be the end of it. But I was given another call the following morning. Which I didn’t pick up of course.

At one point I was tempted to say something on the lines of, “Yes thank you, here’s the address you can send the legal notice to.”

I’m still quite aghast at the whole episode. All this while, this email interaction was also cc’d to another person at the agency and they made no attempt to intervene / say anything. Unless I’m missing something completely obvious to everyone else, WHAT WAS THIS?! Has anyone else faced this previously? If you’re at an agency, is this common practice when it comes to working with those you believe are “influencers”? What is the motivation behind this?

( No names of course because I don’t want one employee’s idiocy to affect the reputation of the entire agency. I’m quite sure the client brand has no idea either. Of course everyone I speak with in-person knows exactly what agency I’m talking about and who their client was. )