Gabriel Marketing Group Leah Nurik They took $20,000+, delivered near no result, when asked for refund, harassed and threatened. mclean VA

My company signed up with Gabriel Marketing to promote a product online for a minimum contract period.  We think it is important that others know how this company worked to our immense disadvantage in this case. We would not recommend them to anyone.

Results: The PR company filed a basic press or Cision newswire and claimed they attempted to contact the media to promote us. In reality we got a few affiliate junk sites covering the PR newswire, something we could have done on our own at 100 times lower cost.

Contract Issue: We were promised in the contract a "guarantee" that several "top tier" publications would cover us, and those top tier along with intermediate tier outlets were named ahead of time. We stated that we did not get the result, and asked for our contract to be closed and our money back. We were threatened with legal action instead of honoring the agreement.

Unprofessional Management: The CEO messaged us with a harassing statement, with tone and use of language that was so wholly unprofessional it was shocking. It's no wonder with that attitude they could not deliver results for us. If that's how they treat a paying client, imagine how they treat others like journalists their supposed to be making relationships with. Looking at reviews on other websites (such as glassdoor), it's clear the CEO has said shocking things to others too, both in and out of the company it seems.

Resolution: There was no resolution in this case because their contract was too well written to protect them, despite the lies and guarantee written in two places. The reality is that arbitration will just take the dispute and split the difference, and that's a waste of our time. These guys aren't worth our time, but telling others what happened is. However, what would make us whole is a refund.

Theory on Their Business Strategy:
Here is our opinion from this experience. We feel that some PR and marketing companies like this may work by find as many clients as possible, accept the work even if they know getting articles will be very hard, and churn and burn the ones that aren't easy to deliver for. In our case in practice, they put their newest and lowest paid intern on the contract, with management overseeing something like a few % of the contact spend.

We were obviously not a priority from the start, and that's clear now.  They likely survive off clients that happened to have an easily marketable product/one that is a fit for their connections and skill. They promote these successes as the norm and coerce others into accepting contracts with guarantees they do not back up, which is probably illegal, but unscrupulous at the very least.