Dear marketing professional,

Whether you work for Company X or are an outside marketing firm/public relations specialist, I need to be blunt. I have grown very tired of the emails and phone calls asking my company, www.metroplexbaby.com, to send a representative to hear Company X speak on a topic that you are certain will be "of interest" to our readers in hopes that we will (1) bear the costs of listening to your presentation and (2) disseminate what in fact is an advertisement for Company X to our readers free of charge. In fact, I find those emails and calls insulting for several reasons:

1. We are not paid reporters. We do not earn a paycheck and are not reimbursed our expenses to specifically go to you for a story. Instead, we are parents who balance providing other parents with information that we ourselves find useful, or which they will find useful (not information that benefits nobody except Company X), with making money to provide for our families.

2. Let's call a spade a spade. CVS contacted us and strongly suggested that we let our readers know about the importance - not of getting a flu shot - but of getting a flu shot AT CVS. More recently, Reliant Energy asked us to attend a roundtable at which we could hear their president discuss their new energy plan in hopes that we would share their plan with our readers. Bottom line, both these companies are doing nothing more than trying to get free advertising for their businesses without paying to advertise on our website - which is how we earn a living.

3. We have carefully built a readership based on trust. We specifically label advertisements as such. Do you really think we would jeopardize that trust to recommend that parents receive flu shots AT CVS or change their energy plan to Reliant without disclosing that these are in fact ads for Company X? And as ads, why would we give them to you for free? Do you earn a paycheck for Company X or do you work for free?

4. I am very skeptic of the integrity of the companies that you represent. If Company X is going to these lengths to avoid incurring the ordinary business expense of advertising, what other shortcuts is it taking?

This is very different from companies that send products and tickets for us to share with our readers - both of which benefit our readers who enter to win those items. What you are offering does not benefit our readers in any way. If we wanted to create a resource about flu shots, we would include all sides of the equation, as well as making it clear that families have several options of where they can get a flu shot, not just CVS. If we were to draft a run down of energy options, it would include all energy options, not just Reliant.

So please, stop wasting our time. If you want to spread the word, do it yourself. If you want someone else to do it for you, then pay them to do it.