This email has been floating around for a week or so, but we're going to run it as a public service. It was first circulated by a PR guy named Peter Shankman as a classic "How Not To Pitch A Reporter" lesson. In this case, the email pitch below was sent to a hedge fund reporter. That is to say, a professional journalist who spends his days chronicling the ins and outs of the secretive high finance world. So one might have expected that a PR firm would cull its email blast list just a bit before it went to work on behalf of its "Long Island based car shop" client. But no! Pitches like this are why reporters hate PR people. CAN YOU GUESS WHICH PR AGENCY THIS CAME FROM? The full pitch (to, again, a hedge fund reporter), and the stunning reveal of the agency's identity, after the jump.

"As the gas prices sky rocket and the housing market cools down to

a standstill companies are looking for ways to hold on to customers

while the economy recovers. How do businesses operate inside of a

volatile market and keep hold of their customers? Long Island based

car shop, Unique Auto Sports has mastered that formula and retains

its long list of celebrity clientele along with its normal

customers through is 10 year track record of impeccable customer

service."

5WPR.

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