Back on December 21, Forrester Senior VP Josh Bernoff tweeted, “I’ve just received a mass email from a PR person offering me an ‘exclusive.’ Hmm…”

I replied, “So that would be first-come first-served?”

I wasn’t the only one who wondered how an exclusive could be offered via a mass email. Josh answered both me and Dan Lantowski, a Waggoner Edstrom account exec, by wondering if it’s even possible to offer an exclusive on a first-come first-served basis. “May the fastest influencer win?” he asked.

I answered that it sounded a lot like cop shows on TV. You know the routine: The cops have suspects in two different interview rooms where they tell the suspects that that whoever confesses first will get the deal. Then I added, “By the way, a mass e-mail offering an exclusive is suck-ass PR.”

On December 23, Josh tweeted me, “The PR firm has responded to me, objects to your characterization of their tactics as ‘suck-ass.’”

I confess: On December 21, I was suffering the first full day of a miserable cold. I was on cold medication. I hadn’t been sleeping. Had all been well, I probably wouldn’t have used the term “suck-ass.” I might have opted for “lazy,” “unprofessional,” or “ill-advised.” (By the way, I have no idea which PR firm sent out the offer.)

Exclusives are like embargoes. I still get emails containing all the details of an announcement along with notice that the information is under embargo. No, I have replied to several of the people who sent these annoucements; it’s not under embargo because it was sent to me without securing an agreement from me to honor the embargo.

Embargoes are obtained based on a one-on-one agreement between a PR practitioner and a publisher or reporter. Without that agreement, there is no obligation to respect the embargo.

So it is with exclusives. They are offered one-on-one based on a conversation. During that conversation, the PR practitioner should convey an understanding of why a reporter (or blogger, podcaster, or whatever) would be interested in covering the news (or conducting the interview or whatever).  The same offer for the same exclusive should not be made to anyone else until the reporter to whom the offer has been made declines.

Just how would you handle it when a dozen of the people to whom you sent a mass email offering an exclusive responded, “Sure, I’ll take that interview?” Tell 11 of them their shit-out-of-luck? Tell all 12 they can have the exlcusive and hope none of them figure out that they all got the same story? Try to spin the story differently for each of them in the hopes that they won’t think they got screwed when they read the pieces the other 11 wrote?

Seriously, I’m asking: How in the world do you offer an exclusive by mass email?

Okay, I take it back. Cold or no cold, it really is suck-ass PR.