[Michelle]

I have been waiting for an opportunity to disclose a strange interaction I had with Otter Public Relations earlier this year. For context, I left the company in 2021 and had left a review on Indeed about my experiences as an employee. At the time of my employment, Otter did not have an unlimited PTO policy, no healthcare/medical benefits (claimed to have them, but never went over benefits), an HR representative – or appropriate pay for the amount of work their publicists were doing. I did not have a positive experience during my time of employment at this company and feel that it is my right to disclose my honest experiences on platforms that are made for that purpose. After the first review was taken down, I submitted another – not out of malice or spam, but because I genuinely thought my review didn’t go through.

Months after I left the review, I was called by one of the Otter PR founders, Scott Bartnick. At first, he claimed to be reaching out because of some of the concerns voiced on Indeed/Glassdoor and wanted to know how he could make the workplace better – I still found it both wildly inappropriate and odd that he was reaching out so long after I had left. He thanked me for my professionalism when quitting and began to ask what steps he felt I could take to prevent a high turnover. I didn’t have an answer for him, and found the call to be redundant. I was about to hang up, but then the true purpose of his call was revealed. He mentioned a Reddit post, which was written by another one of their employees (I think? That’s what he said…). He summarized the post, but after our call I immediately Googled it to see what he was talking about in the first place. I was not, and still am not, able to read the Reddit post because it was taken down, but I was able to find an archived version through Hucksters.

Scott made it very clear that even if I did not write the Reddit post, he did not want me to disclose anymore information about my experiences at Otter PR online. In plain words, he asked me not to leave any more negative reviews and said something along the lines of “negative reviews affect our reputation, which then affects the people who depend on their jobs here to feed their families.” Again, that was not verbatim, but the impact of his words was all the same. I was mortified, upset, saddened, and confused. How could one negative Glassdoor review possibly tank an entire business? How could he know it was me when Glassdoor reviews are anonymous? And why would I use Reddit in the first place? While he was NOT rude, mean or directly threatening – it seemed to me like he was trying to intimidate me into silence, which I consider a form of bullying. Even if his intention was not to intimidate me, intimidated is the only word I would use to describe how I felt when we got off of our call. He is older than me, and has more experience in the field – he knows there is a power dynamic at play, and he succeeded in frightening me to the point where I felt like I couldn’t even speak to my friends about my experiences without feeling paranoid. This is a white man with power and money – he could leverage these resources to threaten with lawsuits or legal action, but sharing negative, honest experiences is a right we all have. If anything, our experiences are the ONLY thing we have after leaving a company.

Out of respect for his wishes, I won’t dive into my specific experience, but I can guarantee you that the GREAT MAJORITY of Otter PR’s reviews you see online when you Google them are either written by Otter PR’s current employees, or are falsified. The Otter PR Hucksters page highlights some of these fake reviews. I will say that there are some client reviews that are positive, which is great. This attests to the true skill and grit of the senior publicists at Otter PR. But if you scroll down to old reviews, you can see that some of the reviews are associated with the founders’ own businesses (Rave Doctor, Bonder, etc), or they’ve been written by employees and their family/friends, which isn’t exactly ethical. But I guess everyone does that second part now, so take that as you’d like.

To those interested in working for this company, I implore you all to please do your research on every corner of the internet possible – and reach out to former employees on LinkedIn to see how their experience was. I cannot speak to how things are now, and I blame my negative experience on negligence at the time I was hired, not on the company as a whole. I believe their workforce is talented, fierce, ambitious, and hungry for opportunities – the heart and soul of this company are its stellar employees with rockstar talent and attitudes. I genuinely wish my former coworkers the best in their endeavors. While I do believe things have changed, prior issues have been solved, and the company is getting better as a whole, I cannot defend working for the founders due to the last interaction I had with them. I have since blocked the founders’ numbers/social media accounts, changed my email, and have not made further attempts to leave reviews (mostly out of fear). I have made my current employer and collogues aware of this situation in case the founders ever followed up or contacted my company about this – to which they responded with grace, understanding, and empathy.

[Alan]

and of course they are from Florida

BEWARE OF OTTER PUBLIC RELATIONS (ORLANDO, ST. PETE, FLORIDA + REMOTE)
byu/Affectionate_Yam4677 inPublicRelations

[Christine]

https://hucksters.net/brand/otter-pr

[Douglas]

if you’re gonna call them out then call them out why you “respecting wishes”

[Kayla]

@ Douglas – maybe to avoid being sued LOL

[Author]

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