The Equifax data breach that was revealed last week has so far been an unmitigated disaster – for the company. While we could spend the entire show talking about the firm’s missteps, we just touch quickly on the lowlights, including poor IT management, the lousy breach notification, a confusing website that was constructed in haste and with overwrought legalese, the lack of quality reporting from the general and security trade press about the incident, and how hard it is to find out whether your own personal information has been compromised. Sadly, this breach will be a case study of what not to do in marketing communications for years to come.

We move on to something that we both have spoken and written about frequently, keyed to a piece that ran this week on Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey (We’d give you a link, but the site is behind a paywall.) It’s about David’s attitude toward PR pitches. He and Paul go over some of his their preferences on things like the length of pitches, whether to mention competitors, how pitch use metaphors and the value of third-party support endorsements. One thing we agree on: Re-pitching – or following up on an earlier pitch – is a good way put yourself in the doghouse. and end up in the deleted email pile.