The Bad Pitch Blog

Three To Do’s Before 2010

2009-11-24T06:31:00.004-05:00

As we head into Thanksgiving, the last few weeks of the year are all but gone. And a couple of truths will present themselves during our final hurtle to 09’s finish line.

1) SELF-COMBUSTING CALENDAR: The end of the year represents the mother of all self-imposed deadlines. This can be a good thing. But if every. last. item. on the books with our clients is not completed? The world will NOT explode. Our job is to figure out which projects must truly get done before the calendar flips and focus on them diligently.

2) HOLIDAY HOURS: Despite the above urgency, the paradox of these final weeks is that there will be down time – people will be out of the office, parties will slow people down. This is time where we can be productive, but we probably can’t get too far on the above list.

So here are three things you should do before the end of the year. These are not resolutions. Resolutions are for health clubs and tobacco cessation products. These three things you can actually accomplish -- quickly.

1) SURPRISE & DELIGHT: Break the established brainstorm mold and mix it up with an unconventional idea fest. The goal is to start the year with one unexpected, unrequested idea for a client. Your competition may already be doing this (just sayin).

2) POP YOURSELF THE QUESTION: Ask yourself if you still love PR. Well, do you? This is a period of forced change. If you don’t like what you do, now is the time to change careers. (we’re NOT saying quit now, we’re saying FIND the job now). There are plenty of other folks who really do love this industry and will happily take your seat. This stuff is hard enough without dissenters in the ranks.

3) GET REAL. FEEDBACK: This is not your annual review. This is not a kumbaya-filled retreat. This is a suggestion box asking for anonymous feedback from everyone on how you can be even better in 2010. If you really love PR, this should be a constructive exercise.

We’re thankful for our careers and we’re hopeful you are too. Have a simply magnificent Thanksgiving.

Day 092/366 - To Do List uploaded by Great Beyond

The Blind? Deaf? Or Just Dumb Pitch

2009-11-08T21:50:00.004-05:00

Bloggers send more than a few emails asking to be removed from a media list, we also send emails to PR people to tell them why a pitch doesn’t work for their blog – and perhaps what might work in the future.

I rarely receive a response from these notes – which is unfortunate and yet telling. But music blogger Olivia Giovetti brings us an experience with a PR firm representing high-end hospitality clients that serves as a clear, and very frustrating, example of what not to do.

Chinese water torture via email? A steady stream of news releases
“I'm a writer who somehow wound up on a PR firm's mailing list receiving releases that were way outside of my beat. I first sent polite yet firm responses to the (frankly terrible) releases asking to be removed from their list to no response and no action.

“After averaging a release a week for about three months (each one followed up with a "Please remove me from your list" and a reminder that it had been requested numerous times before), I sent an e-mail to the firm's CEO and president, beseeching both of them to help. When I STILL got releases from their firm, I wrote a much more terse e-mail back asking if I'd have to ask their clients for help in getting off their lists.

“When that resulted in nothing but more press releases, I broke down last night and e-mailed their clients, who couldn't have been nicer or quicker to get my complaints passed along to the appropriate contacts at their PR firm. I kept it to a mainly just-the-facts e-mail with an emotional plea at the end noting that they may want to reconsider their PR teams if this was how unresponsive they were being to journos.”

Denial – not a river in Egypt
"Today I received an e-mail from the firm's president stating:
'We have learned that you are emailing our clients with negative and incorrect comments about our company refusing to remove you from our media lists. Point of fact is that we don't know you nor have we never heard directly from you about this matter. You are also obviously someone we would not want to work with. If you have issues with our agency please contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX to discuss. Otherwise we will take steps to report your harassment to us and to our clients.'

"I e-mailed and called her back immediately, as polite as I could be. In the e-mail I pointed out that I have dozens of e-mails (both sent and received) in my archives that I would be happy to send. I then forwarded a sample of five or six and called her to be lambasted on the phone with various and sundry threats. I then received an e-mail stating:

'It's been more than 20 minutes and I have not received any of the emails that you supposedly previously sent to me and XXXXXXXXXX asking that you be removed from our mailing lists. Please advise so that we can resolve this matter.'

"I re-sent from my Blackberry (and received delivery confirmations for each e-mail) and then received a phone call from her assistant demanding to know when I would be sending. I told her that they had been sent (a second time) and then also forwarded an e-mail from one of their clients to me, which mentioned that 'They’ve received your previous communication and are committed to honoring your request.'"

"Summing up a back and forth, the PR prez has decided the whole incident was a "fabrication" on my part (because, especially in a recession where I'm going bonkers to make ends meet, I have time to do this stuff). I realize I wasn't going to earn any friends at this firm for jumping on their clients, but it's interesting to see how inept these people were at relating with the public. Now they've not only turned one journo off, they've tapped into that marketing adage that a person with a good experience with a company will tell three people and a person with a bad experience will tell 10. And the only thing that's a fabrication about me is my hair colour. "

The Patience of Job
First let me say that Olivia went above and beyond to try and make this right. The PR firm however took a bad situation, chopped it up into kindling, sprinkled it with gas and light it on fire.

Could we have what Cool Hand Luke would call “failure to communicate?” Nope. I’ve seen screen grabs from Olivia proving that this particular agency was employing what we used to call the rolling thunder strategy: a press release every few weeks regardless of whether or not you have news. Worse still is that the agency paid no attention to their media lists or to their email inboxes for that matter.

According to the agency president, Olivia does not exist on any of their lists; however the agency does use Cision. Having seen screen grabs it does not look like the agency is using email marketing software. In fact, if Olivia was replying to the notes and not getting a bounce back, that proves they probably were not using email marketing to push out the latest in high-end hospitality news.

The PR exec’s arrogant and defensive response is ridiculous. But I’m giving this NYC-based agency an early Christmas gift by not outing them – despite the fact that Olivia asked them more than three times to stop sending her news releases.

Media Relations = Customer Service
If anyone you are pitching ask to be removed from your list? Do it. And make sure you tell them you’re doing it. If you get any communication from these folks that merits a response? Respond. It’s kind of why you send out email in the first place.

Never forget that you’re pitching on behalf of your clients and that’s kind of a big deal. Changing your story, acting arrogant, defensive or just being stupid? It’s eventually going to get back in some form or another to your client.

1983 I'm Surrounded By Idiots uploaded by JD Hancock

Believe In Yourself; But Believe In Trends More

2009-11-06T09:46:00.014-05:00

We're all looking for something to take us to a better place-workwise, that is.

How do we do that? Follow trends.

When you’ve got one example, it’s a “noticeable situation.” When you’ve got two examples, it’s a fact. And when you’ve got three examples—welcome to a trend.

A trend is something that is just happening—the way ads are becoming smaller by the second (and disappearing, thank G-d); the use of tiny devices that are almost ear-sized for us to check who wants to reach us; the tendency for movies to be built around consumer products like Ben Stiller’s haircut or a particular type of Mercedes (crap slogans, wicked cars)—and that is happening in a significant enough way to portend real and widespread change.

The trends enjoyed by a few today will be experienced by many tomorrow, and virtually all next week. And a PR person that wants to excel needs to be a great, not good, trendspotter who can separate the wheat from the chaff, distinguish today’s passing fancy or fading passion from tomorrow’s hot new item du jour.

In lots of businesses — media, entertainment, marketing, fashion or stock-market-related professions — knowing the latest trend is a prerequisite for success (or even survival). The message is clear: you miss out on a trend, you’re out on the street.

I asked a friend, a journalist, why she thought we are so fascinated by trends. “Simple,” she said. “The trends happen without fail, and we find ourselves in the middle of them, and we want to identify what is happening.”

The most important rule in spotting trends is the rule of talking to experts.

Here’s how:

1. Pay attention to people you believe in. Get in touch and ask questions.

2. Ask really good (and useful) questions. Have total belief in your sources and make them know this.

3. Find visionaries who can teach you new ideas, and try to tell them one thing they weren’t aware of. People who are true visionaries know they can take a new person’s idea to another level. So they are thankful to respond to your call/e-mail. It’s important to learn to recognize the difference between true visionaries and slick BS.

4. Be aware of where life is going. Pay attention to the signs that something — big change — is on the horizon.

5. Great trendspotters are always evolving, learning, and growing. Remember that Italian class you’re always thinking of taking? Right.

6. Don’t just read the Arts section. Be well-rounded. In marketing, and in life, nothing succeeds (even success) like a person who is knowledgeable and, er, interesting. And stuff.

Since You Weren’t Reading Carefully, I Made Another List

Here is a sum of what you can do today. It has more group action—in case you didn’t feel like reading before:

1. Follow leaders — pay attention.

2. Use the Net for everything (forget privacy concerns—they’re nonexistent and almost funny now, so go, click, and be merry),because at any given time you can follow the thoughts of approximately 1.5 million random, just-as-fascinated people. A nice number—and one I didn’t have to make up.

3. Collect data on areas that interest you. Hey, one thing that everyone
forgets—and I know I said it before, but I can’t stress it enough—get a napkin and write it down. Even if you don’t ever look at thepage again, the brain works in oh-so-mysterious ways. I do this with my always-neglected shopping lists that I don’t bother with before I "dial up" the Chinese Delivery Guy.

4. Get on mailing lists about things that interest you. It’s so easy to do that now. Gosh, in the old days you had to send SASEs (for the confused, that’s self-addressed envelopes with stamps—or snail). Today you just shoot an e-mail to someone or click a link. I mean, jeez, there’s no excuse.

5. Use separate e-mail addresses just to collect separate information. Get a Hotmail or Gmail account for spam. In these cases, e-mail is—dare I say it—worthy.

6. Subscribe to trade publications. Man, you can get so many of them gratis. In trade magazines you read passionate and often interesting articles on things you had heretofore thought were dull. Plus, you get to see others work hard to explain what you found inexplicable.

7. Talk to experts—arrange to meet. I’ve said it before, and that means I mean it.

8. Don’t ignore indicators. In 1929, the only ones who made it through the crash were those who read newspapers. And really read ’em. By the way, myyahoo.com and mywashingtonpost.com—all that stuff you think you want to know—are not good enough. Expand your wings, broaden personal focus, all those other clichés . . .

9. Just do it over and over again. Nike had a point, albeit a repetitive one.

10. It is indubitably a must to be informed. But come on, talking about being interested in order to succeed is so obvious. If you don’t know this, then close the book. Today, it’s more urgent than ever to be interesting since that would put you in a class by yourself—people tend to like you better because you are a hotbed of “hmm, cool fact” in a society where people repeat the same one-liners daily.

It is better to be remembered for who you are than simply nodded at.

11. Stay awake. I like my lattes with lowfat.

*****Twitter @laermer

Know Yourself, Be Yourself for Better Pitches

2009-10-30T12:40:00.002-04:00

Last week, I had the blind luck to present right before Artie Isaac at SummitUp. If you don’t know Artie, you should.

Artie Isaac co-founded SpeakerSite and the Young Isaac Agency. He also teaches creativity, consumer behavior, copywriting and the history of advertising at The Ohio State University and the Columbus College of Art & Design. Artie started his career with agencies in New York, including Ogilvy & Mather. He holds an MBA in Marketing from Columbia and a BA in English Literature from Yale.

So what do I mean by blind luck? Well Artie’s presentation rocked the house and I would have hated to follow it. But there was some wonderful synergy between my presentation on storytelling and Artie’s presentation on social media as a vehicle for creativity.

Artie’s inspirational speech on creativity convinced me to interview him for the Bad Pitch Blog. While I ask Artie about tips for more creative pitches, he actually gives us a bigger picture perspective from his own experience. And I think it's even more applicable and can be applied to your media relations approach.

Chris Brogan on Better Blogger Pitches

2009-10-22T01:30:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week one half of The Bad Pitch Blog kicked off SummitUp -- an event packed with great content, including presentations from Bob Garfield and Chris Brogan.

The Bad Pitch Blog took advantage of this quality time to ask a few folks about how to improve the pitch. First up is Chris Brogan -- author of the New York Times Bestseller "Trust Agents."

The book stems from his extensive blogging, speaking and community building efforts as president of New Marketing Labs. Here's his quick take on creating better blogger pitches.

The Axed Hack's Guide to Flacking: Are Journalists Meant For PR?

2009-10-11T10:55:00.013-04:00

I'll get right to the point: PR is not the dark side any more.

As a reporter for a plethora of publications in the hard-to-remember '80s, I do recall titters from my colleagues when I defected to PR. I had to make more money and I couldn't cope with holier-than-thou editors. I'd written for USA Today, New York Daily News, New York Times, Crain's NY, Editor & Publisher, Us... and all I got was a T-shirt that said, "Someone read my article."

A lot of PR peers were once reporters who failed in the new gig because PR was immoral or beneath them (don't get me started!). You have to think of yourself in the highest esteem to make it as a journalist -- I get it -- but in order to make the leap into public relations, just cut out that attitude with a scalpel. If you want to be great and make money, you need to passionate about the work. And you just can't fake passion unless you're in porn.

Ever since I switched teams, I have met PR folks who started sentences with, "Back when I was a reporter..." Most were let go from reporting duties by slimming corporations. But some proved to not be so good at either profession.

To do well in the PR industry, you need to make a tough job look easy. You've got to have many balls in the air at one time. A lot seem to juggle well, except for those tasks you didn't come up with on your own.

Here is how to determine whether you've got the goods to make it in our hood--particularly since tons of reporters need jobs.

You belong in PR if...

You have attention to detail (or ATD)
 
Those devilish details are required. Consistency is everything, and if you're careless or sloppy, we beseech you stay away. But if you can spot a mistake from a mile away -- and stop it from attacking -- please join the PR association.

A guy employed at RLM PR previously worked at a terrible agency and came equipped with bad habits. He would write a mediocre draft, and when I said rewrite it, he shrugged, "Why? The client won't notice." He's at Gap now.

You can write -- and edit 

You hate wimpy words like "accepts," "offers," and "ensures." You are all about full and clear sentences. You say what you mean to say, and you aren't that cretin always trying to "come up with a good way to say X." You use lowercase and capital letters correctly. Come on down.

Writing is rewriting.

There was a -- ahem -- creative type in our office who loved to write as though he were pontificating. He was a college professor, so he said. It's one thing to love to hear your own voice, but on paper, that's useless.

You need to see everything to its rightful conclusion

 Reporters can write bad copy, hand it to an editor, and think, "S/he'll fix it." If you can't stomach that though, then join "the lighter side." You know the colleague who figures someone else will finish the product? That guy disgusts you, right? You're the one who ambles into a PR office and says, "What's it going to take to get this done?!?" We call it Gumby -- you never shrug or roll your eyes! You're our type.

You don't get scared at B-movies (or several simultaneous deadlines) 

You would have never said, "I can't do more than one story at a time," as a journalist, and you can manage many screaming babies at once.

A reporter acquaintance came to work and freaked out because our computers were down. He was gone by lunch on day one.

You never call yourself "a people person" 

You deal with words; people are secondary. Of course you're a team player, but will you sit down and create something? From scratch?

In Detroit, the GM Nod occurs when people come to meetings and say yes to every new fantastic idea until they leave the room and murmur, "That ain't going to happen." In PR, you always have to sell in your ideas to clients and colleagues.

How can you tell if you're right for this evolving field that happens to be hiring? You have an innate ability to leave your ego at the door and you can take a message to the people without editorializing!

You don't belong anywhere near PR if...

You think it's a breeze 

Oh puh-leeze. I work my ass off and answer to a ton of chieftains: editors, reporters, producers -- and those clients who send passive aggressive emails all day long! Nothing we do is easy. Don't apply here. You already aren't applying yourself.

We ask applicants from the field of journalism why they want to be in PR. They say it's because they know how reporters work. The last one we hired answered, "because I want to make more money, and I'm not afraid to work hard." We love you!

You've dealt with PR folks so you've got mad skills 

What's that -- incessant babbling against an onslaught of cheery PR types? We already put up with you at one job.

We hired an ex-producer who made an excellent first impression, but the second she arrived, she spent gobs of time saying why pitches wouldn't work and had a nonstop, almost obsessive need to communicate developments. She didn't let the elevator door hit her on the...

It's your way -- forget the highway 

You are so darn flexible, you can do handstands! When push comes to shove, you've never met an answer you didn't know.

Two words: shoe salesman.

If the person doing most of the talking in meetings is you, then we're just not that into you. The best PR people ask lots of questions and listen to answers.

Your mother told you everything you do is precious 

Your mom was wrong, and you've got no stomach for PR because you are as thin-skinned as Bill O'Reilly.

I once hired "The Smartest Person In The World," albeit temporarily. When errors were astutely pointed out to him, instead of learning from them, I got fistfuls of vociferous arguments. His mother worships him; he Tweets about it all the time.

You need someone to hold your hand because an editor did 

A lot of applicants ask: Will you show me the way? Yes, if I was Peter Frampton! You don't have the "pit bull" self-starter thing going on, so let's not.

One of my firm's most successful PR pros arrived from a journalism career in Europe. He asks a ton of questions, but not before trying to find the answer himself. God helps those who help themselves. And we believe in him (lowercase "him" -- the guy we hired).

There are exceptions: You can write a scintillating press release, but still have an ego like Montana? Your ADD is stuck, and your ATD is phenomenal? Hang a hat here!

During these fast four years of co-crafting Bad Pitch Blog, we made it a home for reporters to articulately moan about PR simpletons. But through the most maudlin of economies, more than half of BPB's e-correspondence has been you people (journalists) asking if this snickered-at field could be a home for your needy selves! Letters say, "I can do this, no sweat. I know what's good because, gosh, I've turned down so many pitches!"

You know what I think? You could turn down a bed!

So it appears our two divergent careers have finally fallen in love. Now you have to decide if you're a sweet-grapes person who wants to learn and influence the public while connecting to always-busy people for 10 (you heard 10!) hours each day. If you see yourself pacing in that cubicle, you are a PR person who was once a full-time scribe.

That does not mean call for a job—unless you are offering me something fitting all the above. I'll take the call.

Twitter @laermer.

Selling Ideas with Words, Numbers and Pictures

2009-10-08T12:36:00.004-04:00

We're always trying to tell more compelling stories...delivering messages that get our point across credibly and effectively with our target audiences.

It's one of the reason research and hard numbers(regardless of the sample size) tend to make big news.

When creating messaging to tell a story, consider if words, numbers, pictures or a combination of all three get the job done. Let's say you're trying to note that Wal-Mart has far more stores than their nearest competitor.

omg, Wal-Mart has a freakin' buttload of stores.
or
Wal-Mart has over 4100 stores and clubs in the U.S.
or
As you can see above, the biggest retailer in the world covers an area larger than Manhattan.

All Hail the Infographic
Especially in our social world where people pass around good content like a joint at Woodstock, turning a compelling factoid into an infographic gives you the ability to share it and to share it much more easily than in the past.

And while it would behoove you to work with a graphic designer in creating said infographic (to ensure it doesn't look jank), if you have no other option you can jump into Powerpoint, use Smart Art to create your own and save the slide out as a .jpg.

You can see the dramatic impact a visual makes in truly getting a point across. Creating one is time well spent.

Cross-posted from Strategic Public Relations

The Trap of Desperation Tactics

2009-10-06T22:54:00.002-04:00

Some say we’re out of the recession. But if you consider the number of people you know “in transition,” I’ll argue we’re still in a period of forced change.

Cue inspirational quote:
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity while an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” – Winston Churchill.

Forced change can be a good thing or a bad thing…it all depends on your outlook. I’m not going to turn this into a rallying cry. There are plenty of those out there already – from classic to irreverent to misunderstood. But I am going to suggest that doing more of the same isn’t going to get us anywhere.

The Worm Has Turned
It became clear to me how bad things have gotten when media outlets started pitching me. This actually started happening some time ago. But the stream of media-issued news releases has increased significantly over the last 12 months. The scary part?! They’re now promoting single episodes of specific programs. What are the odds that mainstream media are going to get a ratings boost around a specific episode by issuing news releases to bloggers?

Add to this the proliferation of spam into every other electronic nook and cranny I have access to and it looks like, anecdotally at least, that people seem to think that more is more when times are tough. Some are relying more on email marketing because it’s "cost-effective." Others are getting onto social media sites and using them as a broadcast channel.

Action is required. So is speed. But without strategy it’s all futile, turning into white noise.

Rally Caps?
The challenge is to push ourselves creatively and try something new. And herein lay the traps.
When looking for a job right out of school they tell us to stand out. In the same breath they quickly warn people not to send your resume on a pizza box or send one shoe with the note: “I’ve got one foot in the door so I would like an interview with your company.” You don’t want to be a water cooler trophy for people to point at and laugh.

So how do you show someone you’re urgent and intense, but not desperate? How do you stand out for the right reasons?

Start with your instincts. Just don’t start with what worked yesterday. And remember that more of the same stuff is just desperate. In times like this, we need better stuff.

Rally Cap uploaded by sarowen

"Go Do Your Job" Syndrome--and Invitation to Webinar

2009-10-01T11:26:00.006-04:00

It’s your first week on the job and you’ve managed to find the coffee, remember your cube neighbor’s name, and find your office without getting lost in the maze of hallways. But what about the job you were hired for? Without warning, the CEO stops by your office to let you know that the company has just signed a deal and he wants you to “get press” on it. Now.

After a few questions, you find out this so-called deal really doesn’t impact anyone. One of those “agree to love you” deals that offers nothing tangible. But it’s your job to “get press” on this non-announcement.

So you're supposed to, ah, do your job. Well. You’re new and don’t want to upset the guy at the top, but you know this is the type of release that will just float aimlessly in cyberspace on sites that nobody sees or cares about. As John Keating said to his students, “Carpe, carpe diem. Seize the day boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” You can make yourself stand out. Seize this bogus announcement as an opportunity.

Praise and admiration go a long way, so it’s definitely your job to compliment while proving your point. Demonstrate your knowledge by researching the partner company, understanding their business. Perhaps an event that brings together like customers? Or a Webinar addressing an issue others want to learn about? Think of something that actually engenders interest.

Once you’re prepared, go to the CEO and congratulate him on this great new partnership you’re looking forward to helping the company leverage. Instead of bashing the “get press” and “circulate a press release” idea, dive right in and explain your idea of hosting a joint Webinar that will address an issue of concern and will be mutually beneficial. Explain how this will have an impact on your clients. Let the CEO know you can acknowledge the partnership internally with staff and on your site. Be prepared for questions and have your answers ready. Don’t forget – this is your opportunity to shine. Demonstrate your knowledge of your company and what success means to them.

If the table turns and the C-guy agrees but still wants that press release, explain how the announcement alone is not “news” and that by taking the time to develop media lists, send out, and follow up will take you away from work that really will have an impact. Further, you’ve developed strong relationships with reporters. Ask if it’s worth it to tarnish these relationships by providing reporters with information they aren’t interested in. The more ammo you have to support your stance, the better. Push!

For those not actively engaged in public relations, the concept of “getting press” is often foreign. Either they freely defer to those that handle PR, or they aimlessly fire off requests without realizing that their suggestions won’t hold up to the scrutiny of a newspaper editor. It’s your job – and yes, your opportunity – to educate them and demonstrate your knowledge to showcase your value. Don’t get upset. Don’t take it personally. Often, they just don’t know any better.

Be a shining star—not a whiny burn-out bulb. Step up to the challenge and prove your worth. Be that guiding light they’ve been missing--obviously!

With that I’d like to let you know that I will be holding a Webinar, co-hosted by Susan Jacobsen, on October 6 at 2 pm! It’s called “What Your Clients Don’t Know Will Hurt You!” and there are more details at http://tinyurl.com/clientsarenotgods.
Come join us.

Twitter @laermer

Good Pitch: Sound Content Nets Podcast Placement

2009-09-30T06:02:00.002-04:00

Our latest good pitch comes from Tamara Gruber with Red Giant Consulting (alas, no relation to Macgruber, we checked). Her pitch is to some discerning, fellow PR colleagues – Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson of the For Immediate Release podcast.

Background
"In doing outreach for a client, Tungle.com, I reached out to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Of course there is no tougher audience than PR professionals so I wanted to make sure I nailed it by demonstrating that I was very familiar with them, their content and that I applied directly to something relevant to them and their audience.

"I was thrilled to hear Shel not only read my email on FIR episode 484, but also compliment me on the pitch. It starts at the 51.30 mark."

That is high praise. And if you haven't checked out Shel and Neville’s podcast, you should. With nearly 500 episodes under their belt, they have a great mix of insight, opinion and guest interviews from which any PR person will benefit.

The Pitch
---
Hi Neville and Shel,

I’m a long-time FIR listener and especially love your kerfuffle dissection. I’m just catching up while on the train to NYC and listening to episode #481 and heard you mention that you both use agreeAdate.com to schedule meetings.

agreeAdate is definitely a step up from all the back and forth emails and phone calls it sometimes takes to schedule meetings. However, I wanted to introduce you to a client of mine, Tungle.com. Tungle is also a free service but makes scheduling meetings even easier because it is integrated with your existing calendar.

Tungle lets you propose multiple times in meeting invitations, publish your availability, invite others to book meetings with you and share calendars across companies, platforms and time zones. Tungle syncs with existing e-calendars, including Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal and Entourage for Mac with Lotus Notes support coming soon. Tungle meetings are automatically added to your calendar and if your calendar fills up before the meeting is confirmed, those times will no longer be displayed to your invitees to avoid double booking.

I know how busy you guys are so thought you might appreciate a more integrated and elegant solution. Instead of me blathering on about how cool Tungle is, you can watch a video here and more about Tungle.me that allows you to publish your calendar here.

They will be at DEMO next week presenting some cool new stuff. If you want a personal demo, the CEO Marc Gringas would be happy to oblige. You can Tungle him at: http://tungle.me/marc.

If you have a chance to check it out, I’d be interested to see what you think. Thanks for all your hard work and diligent reporting. You are adding so much value to the PR community.

SIG FILE
--

Our Take
Shel and Neville enjoy talking about various services that might be of use to their readers. Tamara knows this and her reference to listening to their podcast is clearly legit. The content as a result is helpful and respectful of her client’s competitors. Noting her client will be at DEMO gives them street cred. By including links to more information and giving them access to her client’s CEO -- using the very product she’s pitching -- it’s no surprise she won over For Immediate Release.

Are you targeting podcasts and other online outlets for your clients? Their ability to identify a niche audience, combined with the resulting impact on search, make them well worth the time and investment.

Have Balls; Mortgage Will Follow!

2009-09-21T13:23:00.007-04:00

I’ve been hearing a lot of people tell me they won’t do anything gutsy: Friends advising me against certain actions cause someone might react poorly (as if anyone’s paying attention); colleagues warning they think everything should be on pause while the economy recapitulates; partners saying no to events because they think it could hurt their “personal brand” (whatever that latest cliché means); and clients who feel their dulled-out partners might “get mad” over an overly-aggressive PR campaign (their partners couldn’t get press on their own though). Then I’ve overheard many suffering financially tell me they are waiting out this period to see what happens in a kind of take it “day by day” attitude that emits this kind of what will be will be or it is what it is or what can I do but wait and see bullshit.

Hey everyone; guess what? The chips have now fallen … so go get some off the floor!
Laziness equals self-importance during a crap economy. If you think somehow things will magically change overnight –look Ma, Dow moved a notch—then you live in a fantasy land and the faster you wake up and stop paying attention to the Gosselins and DO SOMETHING the better it is for and your bank statement.

Having balls are at issue. The only way to get anything done worth doing is to take risks. No chance taken is wasting precious energy (same old same old sucks); you aren’t doing much to upgrade your position in life. Dare I say: it will help your personal brand?

There is no better time to stand up and say, “Let’s try that ridiculous idea in the office” (and in your personal life too, imagine) than this goddamn second. It IS that simple. If you look at our nation’s checkered history, all the fine successes that came up during Down Periods were when companies, the government or individuals said screw it let’s do it and went head-first to partake of the nuttiest, “over-the-toppest,” and most outrageous thing they could think of in their wildest, and least expensive, dreams.

Must I tell you why? First, no one is paying attention to you anyway. Everyone is so darn turned inward right now that to get any attention you have to be shouting from a multitude of rooftops (see The Rules below).

Your clients/friends/lovers/associates/bosses/enemies could care less if you’re loud or noisy do because they’re ultimately worried about their own skin. They’ll appreciate you had the chutzpah to make a thing happen when they cannot. (Well, they won’t admit that to you but you’ll sense it.)

As for trouble gathering, it’s like the old saying that I will now make NEW: If it makes you feel good…do it!

There is a big group of workers doing a great noiseless job Covering Their Asses—they worry about their jobs more than doing their jobs. You know the ones: they act like wallpaper and hope to G-d no one notices they’re still there because they just do what they are told. Never make waves, always seem to be on the side of zero activity. Those people are useless. And I know you aren’t one.

Alas, making money in a gargantuan recession is tough; there is not a ton of money for companies to spend. Ah but…when the dust settles ones who excelled with their heart will be remembered; the CYAers whose heads were down will be despised. With that, I offer The 5 Rules For “Balsiness” In These Bad Times:

1. Be consistent, be yourself

You know, I never thought I’d say this, but you got to hand it to Ex-VP Cheney. He never veers from who he is—even when it’s dastardly! The other day he was asked about the torturing he oversaw and said he wouldn’t take back the decision even if rendered unlawful. That’s an attitude many of us can learn from: not the position he’s taken, but the feeling that what he believes in is not swayable and you can’t make him take it back. In these times that kind of resoluteness is respected.

2. Rule the roost somehow
Find something that you can do at work that no one else can do and MAKE SURE it’s obvious that you are doing it—and well, and a lot of it, and with glee. Oh, and it helps if this is not part of your job! This is not kissing butt; it’s just finding a new way to be useful above and over the norm. Then, when you want to do something outrageous like I’m about to describe, more people will think “Yeah him.”

3. Find the loudest perch--and make noise from atop the thing
Come up with a statement that is contrarian to the popular view (like “I hate candy!”) and then get known for it. I’m serious.

4. Think up something fantastic
When you’re falling asleep at night and something weird but doable occurs to you, jump up and type it out on your PDA. Once you determine what you were trying to say, it will be a better idea in the morning. Then that germ of an idea has to be something you talk about with lots of folks. Shift your energy—daydreams and small talk – and get collaborative in a real sense. Don’t be competitive; be outright damning to anyone who thinks it is a bad idea. Remember that if everyone likes it there’s something wrong with the idea—someone has to hate it (it’s the law). And don’t let it get murdered by Committee Think, Inc.

5. Be Known as a Bit of a Trouble Maker (Key Words “Bit Of”)
Why not? Show off a little. They’re going to talk about you anyway. So in order to wreak havoc, make waves. It’s good to be remembered, particularly since the layoffs are not over, no matter what the economists (wrong) say. Trouble is healthy and yet more common in headier times. These days with so many scaredy-cats working at their desks, someone with some verve/gusto will stand out as someone to KNOW. Everyone may be mad at K West, but his tour went on sale Friday and it’s nearly sold out. Trouble? Yeah. T for paycheck.

And don't forget: this thinking can help in pursuit of late-night activities too.

Bottom line is there is no bottom line. There is no energy or gumption or newness in almost every industry. But you – you! - have one superb idea that is rambunctious and in line with how people are feeling—you can feel its ingeniousnes. I bet you could get others to participate in it, since, uh, they don’t have much going on besides award shows, tweeting, and fantasy football!

You got to be the guy who stands up in middle of a dull meeting and says what are we doing here? As my pal Sally Hogshead, author of “Radical Careering” and a marketing expert who doesn’t demur, says: “Never allow the size of your mortgage to exceed the quality of your work!”

Remember you have to secure buy-in from everyone you work with. Way to get something going is to sell it, baby. Believe in the idea to such a degree that those whose normal M.O. is to naysay lunch orders might even go “You know! That dude knows what he is talking about.”

Be passionate, have your talking points at the ready, and explain what the agreeable colleague will get for going along. Show them what positivity/money/affirmation will occur should the idea become reality. Make it seem like they co-crafted it by writing down input. Like a Broadway producer once told me: “Never tell prospective investors the production is finished.”

If the ones who pay you paltry cash tell you “no you didn’t” cause you a) took a stand; b) went a little overboard with messaging or c) began to tell it like it is (“Our industry is slow-as-crap and it’s time to rush things,”) then you got to find better payers. Maybe say what I do when someone says to me, Well we should discuss this internally before it goes any further:

“Yeah I get it. It’s all good. Would you have the person that replaces you call me?”

Twitter @laermer

Creativity Is What We Need Every Day

2009-09-17T15:35:00.000-04:00

Creativity is almost impossible to define. According to consumer-insight researchers at Lucid Incorporated, every person recognizes he or she has it, but its meaning varies widely. Anna Sandilands and Anna David, who quit Starbucks to found a company notably called Lucid, have appealing perspectives on creativity, both from their experience at the coffee lords and from an astounding 2006 research project on behalf of Apple Computer.

There they found that people not labeled (and pressured to be) professional "Creative Types" usually have fresher and less formulaic views on what being creative is. A lawyer they interviewed saw his mountain-bike riding as highly creative because it gave him inspiration for his cases.

Lucid also found that for all people—regardless of their jobs and whether they are thought of as ingenious by others—to create is as basic a need as food, water, and sleep. Even if the result of their creativity—a poem or a cake—doesn’t turn out perfect, and the process was a nightmare, it is rewarding to them because it exercises a part of their brains they feel fulfilled for having used. So next time you’re at a museum pretending not to be bored, remember you’re a better person for being there!

Those Lucid talked to cited time constraints as the reason for limiting creativity. It seems all of us would benefit from time for real thought, so turn off the browser right now. Put your feet up and ponder the stars and the sun and that gorgeous bit of chocolate you munched upon last night. Daydream, believe it.

Corporations do not nurture creativity! Even at an innovative company such as Starbucks, so say Lucid’s founders, any artistic aspect is not brought in until the key people upstairs have nailed down the business end, at which time it is often too late to influence key decisions.

Problem? In many firms creativity is seen to be an add-on rather than a must-have and is treated with Rodney Dangerfield levels of respect. And everyone, I must remind you, has “an opinion and an asshole,” as Oscar Wilde said to no one in particular. We are all so eager to share our opinions on creative work that is now being managed to death so it becomes a useless melting pot of poor and superb. (There is too such a thing as a bad idea.)

Teresa M. Amabile, Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at the Entrepreneurial Management unit of Harvard Business School (say that 5 times!), argues that every intelligent person has potential to be creative at their job, regardless of whether they toil in Marketing, HR, Finance, or Lunch Meat Selection. And accounting too, but that’s dangerous to say in public blogs.

From Lucid’s lucid insights it appears encouraging people to be creative in their jobs makes folks feel better about the daily grind and gives real value to those who have to “think different” for a living.

Whatever, so long as people stop treading on the toes of others trying to do something hard, fast, and innovative.

Big corporations aren’t organized so that the people with ideas are respected for them. Recommendation is to bring in the outsiders, whose businesses revolve around being an Idea Factory. Plus those who haven’t drunk your Kool-Aid will tell you your shit stinks. Get those folks into the process as early as possible. Bring ’em in, put ’em on pedestals, chain ’em to a desk, give ’em M&M’s.

BESIDES...

No one has ever formalized just what creative is! It’s not on any job description I’ve eyeballed. Obviously, some work environments are more conducive to creativity than others. For instance, a high-pressure work space of go-go-go will distract from the focus required to make one’s mind roar. There is also a school of belief that creativity has a direct correlation with joy: people are happy when they have an idea, and because they also have better ideas when they’re happy.

Guess van Gogh should have left that ear on after all.

Tweet with us @badpitch & @laermer

A look at your personality: Try being one person

2009-09-11T15:08:00.007-04:00

In her book, "am*BITCH*ous," Debra Condren says career-oriented women have to fight to get any work-life balance. Women, she claims, are constantly fighting to maintain separate personal and professional lives. Women feel there has to be a sweet spot! Give up on some personal goals and some professional ones, but damn it, have it all.

Dr. Condren believes that women cannot, however, enjoy a real balance! To her, achieving apparent balance means that you are doing everything partially and nothing well. She is wrong — this is true not just for women but for every one of us who gets up at 6 or so, slops on some soap, and drones off to get a job done!

Work personality and life personality balance is real and is what the coming decade will be about. After 10 years of struggling, we can finally have our cake and eat it too. Read on.

Picture this: The guy kisses his wife, pats his teenaged daughter on the head, chucks little Timmy under the chin and ruffles his hair, and heads off to work, where he fills his role being Mr. Tough Boss. He yells; he screams; he is a hard-ass who pretty much spends his day wishing he could get home a little earlier so he would not have to continue being At Work Guy. He knows his employees hate him, but that is just the freaking way it has to be, and he wishes they knew he is more than Mr. Tough Boss.

He is desperately seeking to balance his work and his life personality, and he does not know how to do it because he is that guy. His career, he figures, depends upon him being MTB.

But there is no such thing as work personality and life personality balance. If you are maintaining any semblance of balance it is because you are still dividing yourself between two goals — it is too difficult to maintain a personality that is not your own. You will continue being unhappy and frustrated.

What Carl or Cindy C. needs to comprehend is that by removing the pressures of trying to achieve balance, we have a much clearer idea of what jobs are really right for us, and in which careers we should kill to excel. No matter what, it will be about moving up, because that is the meaning of aspiration.

In the new era, natural dispositions and personalities will point us to careers where we are fulfilled inside and outside of work — and act as the same person!

We need to maintain the same personality throughout our day. Instead of trying to balance our lives, why not find the right position or career in which we can truly be who we are and work to maximize vividly appealing, obvious strengths instead of constantly trying to minimize our faults?

In the coming period, one that will be better, I promise, we will need to move away from classic positions and traditional leadership roles. We will veer from the steady path toward positions that are more in tune with our self images. As baby boomers leave the workforce and Generation Zero gets off the elevator with an “I will try it for a few months, and if I do not like it, I will take my toys and go home,” attitude, you will see more and more workers — some skilled, some not–searching for the right position at the right company.

That position and company will play to individual strengths and allow people to work best within their personality type (if they do not find the right position, do not expect them to stick around for long).

This is indeed good – nay, great - news. It means that with some effort you can better manage your workforce, get higher levels of productivity from them (and you), feel like yourself while you whistle and work, and not pretend to be someone else. Gone will be harried days when Carl Corporate comes home exhausted and disgusted and in desperate need of an after work martini to help him shake off the day’s horrors. In his place will be a healthier, happier man who can be himself both in and outside of the office.

Boy I’d like to know him. And you, I think, want to be him.

twitter @laermer

EXCLUSIVE: RLM PR Tapped by HARO for Public Relations Counsel

2009-09-10T20:58:00.002-04:00

The Bad Pitch Blog is pleased to ~~leak~~ ~~announce~~ tell you that Peter Shankman’s crowd sourcing secret weapon, Help a Reporter Out (HARO), has retained RLM Public Relations as their public relations agency of record. Bad Pitch Blog co-author, Richard Laermer, is RLM PR’s CEO.

Bad Pitch Blog and HARO "go together like peas and carrots" – if the peas and carrots in question are piss and vinegar. So we are pleased to be the first to note this loose connection in an anti-news release format. Both Bad Pitch Blog and HARO take a new, unconventional approach to achieving better media relations at all costs.

RLM has been hard at work in making HARO a household name – securing coverage within the first 10 days of the relationship in Forbes magazine and online publication AllBusiness.

From Forbes:

“If the reporter is asking about cruise ships and you send him information on cabins in the woods, you're gone. Your domain is blocked, and you're not coming back on HARO," Shankman says. "And if I'm really in a bad mood and the reporter's really angry, I just might out you in my next edition."

That’s our kind of consequence.

HARO has quickly increased membership since Shankman created it in 2007. Now at 100,000 members, HARO has excelled at doing more than simply connecting journalists and sources…free of charge for both parties.

HARO: “Kind of a Big(ger) Deal”
Bad Pitch Blog spoke with HARO Chief Operating Officer Thom Brodeur about the decision to work with RLM.

“It’s time to change the dialogue around HARO,” says Brodeur. “We’re more than a matchmaking service for media, PR people and sources. We’re a social media company with a business model, revenue and profits. How many Web 2.0 companies can make the same claim?

"Take Facebook, where HARO was created. We’re able to help small and medium sized businesses more efficiently and effectively than Facebook. We offer advertising opportunities to these companies, which has changed the game for some of them. And we provide them with a valuable PR/marketing service. There’s so much more here than people realize and we need someone to tattoo this message on the backside of the industry.”

When asked to comment on this new concept of "getting ink," Laermer declined, quickly bridging into key message points and hoping aloud that Shankman won’t ask his PR counsel to jump out of an airplane.

Posted, tongue firmly in cheek, by @prblog.

The REAL Difference Between Journalists & Bloggers

2009-09-05T15:45:00.011-04:00

One of the more frequent questions asked of the Bad Pitch blog is “what’s the difference between pitching journalists and bloggers?”

We used to assume that the main difference was that pitching bloggers requires hyper-customization. And while they do, it’s deeper than this – there’s a bigger difference.

80/20 Rule
If we did an analysis of all the ham-fisted pitches sent our way, I’ll bet that 80 percent or more of them are originally aimed at bloggers.

This 80/20 rule has always bothered us. Why are pitches more prone to piss off bloggers than journalists? It’s not like misguided PR people send their “Sunday best” pitches to the media and “casual Friday” pitches to the bloggers. That maneuver would require something other than the rampant mass pitching that takes place.

After receiving thousands of pitches over the last three plus years, we can tell you that the bad ones suck consistently across the board.

What’s the Difference?
At the risk of oversimplifying, and pissing off our friends from the fourth estate (again), I’ll start out by saying…

…the difference between journalists and bloggers is paid vs. passion.

* Paid: First let me be clear and note that passion is required to turn a job into a career. Journalism is no different. I mean, who hasn’t watched “All the President’s Men” and thought “How amazing would it be to help right wrongs of national magnitude by day and chill with people code-named Deep Throat at night?”

But for the most part, journalists are paid to do their job. And with every job there are things you put up with in exchange for the rest of it – and your paycheck. Bad PR pitches become a cost of doing business.

When we talk live to journalists, instead of via email (gasp!), they usually tell us about their bad pitches. The journalists consider sending them our way, but they “never get around to it.”

The journalists are getting the same bad pitches the bloggers are getting. They’ve just developed a tolerance over the years. That twice-monthly paycheck is a powerful antibiotic to fend off the ill of bad pitches.

* Passion: From NASCAR to knitting, if you start a blog for any other reason than passion for that topic, it will be hard going. Passion fuels push-button publishing. Sometimes passion is the only thing fueling the effort.

More often than not, bloggers are not getting paid; they haven’t monetized. And unlike Mommy bloggers, many aren’t having largess foisted upon them by marketers at such levels that a swag recycling station has to be set up at one of their industry conferences (a topic for another post on another blog).

So when you send a ham-fisted pitch to a blogger? You’re tossing cold water on their passion. You’re implying you don't really care about their favorite topic. I’m more likely to take a bad pitch personally than a grizzled newsroom veteran who can filter through them without even thinking twice.

Church & State
From paid vs. passion, let's look at paid vs. earned media. Journalists are usually never involved with ad sales. There’s a church and state separation between paid and earned media so the journalists can focus on the content and the end product can remain unbiased.

The bloggers that are making money from their efforts are usually a solo operation. They’re church, state and everything else in between. Can bloggers remain unbiased in these situations? Many certainly do so. But it’s been a slippery slope. It’s been so slippery that the FTC is all up in our grill over disclosure.

Pitch Early vs. Often
When working with bloggers another issue is timing. Everyone assumes that bloggers move at the speed of social media. The technology certainly permits them to live blog, live tweet and send photos from the field. But even the pitches that make the cut can get pushed to the side when life happens.

Most bloggers do this in their free time. If they have a job and a life, blogging takes third place. It should take third place (the author reminds himself).

It’s frustrating. But there’s a way to mediate this issue. If we recognize that bloggers have less than predictable publishing cycles, and we start pitching them earlier, we’re more likely to see success.

We need to start comparing their publishing cycle more to trade publications than the AP Newswire. Trade journalists work an average of three months in advance and don't have an international newswire to distribute their stories as needed. Bloggers do have this access to technology, but it doesn't mean they have to use it.

So the real difference between journalists and bloggers are their motivations. Motivations define their deadlines and their receptiveness to pitches. Keep all of this in mind when preparing your next round of pitches. And get motivated!

* posted by @prblog

The Uptake: Press Badge uploaded by Chuckumentary

Fast Five Links: Me Write Pretty One Day

2009-08-27T21:56:00.004-04:00

Here are some quick links to help you with your pitching efforts -- they all focus on writing. Don’t read into that though.

1) One Word One Word.com
One word, sixty seconds. It’s a great creative exercise to keep your writing chops honed and your brain thinking.

2) Acronym Finder Acronym Finder.com
Acronyms are inside baseball and ultimately make your writing harder to read. Acronym Finder is a reminder of how bad it can get, but it’s also a handy reference too.

3) 31 Ways to Find Inspiration for your Writing Write To Done
This is one of several great articles from the Write to Done blog.

4) Twitter for Writers Inkygirl
This is not Twitterature, but a way to connect with writers via Twitter to share tips and more.

5) Press Release Grader HubSpot
“HubSpot's Press Release Grader evaluates your press release…based upon basic factors from public relations experts including the language and content of the release, plus advanced factors from Internet marketing experts such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.”

BONUS LINK: 12 iPhone Apps for Writers The Editorial Engine
The world doesn’t revolve around the iPhone, but there are some handy apps out there to check out if you own this gadget.

We’ve covered this topic before for Fast Five Links and we’ll probably do it again at some point. It’s the one skill that's arguably the most critical and it impacts nearly everything we do.

watch out uploaded by solecism

The Interview Brief: A Bad Pitch How-To

2009-08-24T23:46:00.003-04:00

The pitch worked. The interview’s scheduled.

Now the real work begins.

We could arguably start “The Bad Interview Blog” with all the gaffes that can occur in this critical phase of media relations. Instead of ~~more~~ this drama, we’ll help you create an interview brief so you, and your source, can steer clear of a bad interview.

The 411 and Then Some
The goal of the document is to prepare your source for the interview and it also keeps you on target during the interview. Here are the key elements of an interview brief.

Deadline: This is the date the reporter is most concerned about. Sometimes there is a drop deadline, but I don't ask unless their preferred timing won't work with a source's schedule.

Run Date: This is the date your source is most concerned about. In fact, "when will we see it?" is usually the first question from a source. This is more than understandable.

Interview Date: This is the date you should be most concerned about. This is obvious, but you're the glue making sure the interview goes off without a hitch.

Mode of Contact: Creating a dial-in number with pass codes and pin numbers? Calling the reporter direct or vice versa? It’s best to spell this info out in the document to avoid any last minute confusion.

Background: What is the reporter’s story angle? Are they putting your source into a round-up? Is this an industry trend story? Has the reporter already spoken with other sources? Who else is being interviewed for the article? In your initial call with a reporter you need to ask a lot of questions. You might not get all the answers, but you won’t know unless you ask.

The more background you have, the better you can prepare your source. If you are in the early stages of interviewing...you better be quotable or you risk winding up as background. If you are in the late stages of the interview, what exactly is the reporter looking for at this point? You will need to focus on this as the article is already half-written.

Intro Questions: Some reporters do not give these out. Most will do so when you note they are to help prepare your source and make the best use of the reporter’s time. It’s understood that other questions may come out of the initial discussion.

Key Messages: This is the heart and soul of this document and where you show your value in the process. If you do nothing else, do this before an interview.

What is the source going to say? Reminding them of the key messages and important points they’ll want to make in the interview is critical. If you do not know what the messaging should be, find time with your source before hand to create it together. Keep these to bullet points. Think in sound bites, not soliloquies.

And remember, these points cannot read like corporate-speak. The source needs to internalize them in their own words so the messages are more conversational.

About Reporter: Any relevant background on the reporter is great here. Also include the last three articles they’ve written--with important references highlighted. Your source needs this document to prep, but she is busy and she will not digest every word. Make it easy for her to use this info.

About Outlet: Yeah, odds are good the source is aware of the reporter's media outlet in some capacity. But a reminder of their circulation, basic elevator speech and URL for more info can’t hurt.

Be, uh, Brief
It’s called a brief for a reason. Just put the most important, relevant facts into this document to make it an easier read. Odds are good your source won’t read the entire document. Help her focus. The brief will help both of you do just that.

Want More? Any other how-to topics you’re interested in? Basic or advanced, let us know what other topics you’d like to read more about. You can find me on Twitter as @prblog and @badpitch.

Raising a voice for the homeless uploaded by ItzaFineDay

Mike Hendricks and the Laws of Shamelessness

2009-08-21T08:30:00.006-04:00

[Before you read this unbelievable yet truth-be-told tale of a bad, bad pitch, it is important to note: The names of firm we were contacted by and recipient of the horrid letter were sweetly redacted. All content is quoted verbatim from communications sent by ridiculous “journalist” to shocked “recipient."]

Happy Friday. At Bad Pitch headquarters, we receive many tips regarding awful and worse pitches. (Thanks to all you tipsters!) This one, which Kevin and I received earlier this month, may actually be the crown jewel of all bad pitches—and in a groundbreaking turn of events is one of the first bad pitches in nearly four years of doing this that emanated from a reporter –sent to a PR person.

So let’s get started...

First, note sent to us:

I just encountered a case of “reverse” bad pitching – this time from a journalist who may (or may not) be interested in an entry-level PR specialist position we’re advertising. My mouth literally dropped open when I opened this first thing this morning – completely disrespectful of our entire industry and not understanding the full extent of PR.

Hold it. Before we get to the good stuff, you’ll need some background. Mike Hendricks is a longtime Metro columnist for the Kansas City Star. Like many other people in the daily paper industry (or really any industry nowadays), Hendricks received news that his salary would be reduced. He went the way of other Americans: he started looking for a new job, specifically in the PR industry. This is not a stretch since we all know that doing PR and writing are two sides of a similar ink-stained coin.

Hendricks came across a pretty standard job posting on the Internet:

Public Relations Specialist – (Firm Name)
(Identifying information about Firm), is looking for a bright, motivated individual to serve as its public relations specialist. Duties include but are not limited to writing news releases, pitches and other pieces …

(Description of normal PR duties snipped for space.)

Sound like your state-of-the-art entry-level PR job? “Specialist,” “Account Executive;” pretty much what you’d expect.

Hendricks wrote a note in response (this is verbatim…typos his):

From: Mike Hendricks
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009
To: (Contact person)
Subject: job posting

(Contact,)

Saw your posting on the (Web site).

As a journalist for 30 plus years and a newspaper columnist the past 12 at The Kansas City Star, I am eminently qualified to be your public relations specialist -- despite no paid experience in public relations.

Frankly, if there's a pr person above the pr specialist, I'm probably qualified for that job, too.

After all, I've been dealing with public relations folks from the other side for three decades as a reporter, editor and columnist. Don't get me wrong. Many PR people are skilled at what they do. Yet many others are simply nice but don't have a clue how to sell a story.

The former are usually former newspaper journalists. The latter are not.

That said, I would be happy to submit an application, but I'd hate to be wasting your time and mine if it turns out this is some minor league position with a paltry salary.

Yes, I'm not supposed to mention money. But we're both adults and recognize that, in the end, that's what it comes down to. I still write a column at The Star. I make a decent salary. I'm not looking for a pay cut.

I could submit my resume, but doing so would imply that this is my job pitch. It's not.

The job sounds enjoyable. But I'd also like to know that it's a good fit.

Thanks for your time.

Mike Hendricks
Metro columnist
The Kansas City Star

PS. By the way, my wife and I (identifying info) haved great interest in many of the topics in your publications, (identifying information).. Our book on (identifying information) in KC will be published in September by the Kansas City Star book division. (Italics mine.)

Our contact’s response to Hendricks:

From: (Contact)
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009
To: Mike Hendricks
Subject: RE: job posting

Hi, Mike –

Thank you for your interest in the PR specialist position at (Firm). However, based on your e-mail below, I don’t think you would be a good match for the position at this time. While I appreciate your strong experience in the newspaper industry, public relations goes much deeper than simply pitching journalists.

Our pay may be equivalent to the minor leagues, but I can assure you that we are major-league caliber in every other way. And, by the way, I *am* the person above the PR specialist.

Best of luck on promoting your book and other future endeavors.

Best regards,

(Contact)

Hendricks’ response seconds later:

From: Mike Hendricks
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009
To: (Contact)

Subject: RE: job posting

So you're saying that I didn't sell you with my sweet talk?
You're right. I probably wouldn't be a good match for the position. I'm much better as a writer/editor.
As you can tell, I'm new to this whole job search thing, having not been on the lookout for a new position since Reagan's first term. Wouldn't be now if the newspaper industry wasn't in free fall.
Not that I'm wholly unpolished when it comes to sending out job letters. In recent months, I've sent out some rather upbeat sales pitches to potential employers. Even got a phone interview that seemed to go well.
I think my salary expectations did me in on that one.
Just for the sheer heck of it, I decided to try a different tact with you.
Didn't work all that well, but it felt good to drop the phoniness (mine). I guess I'd much rather be writing/editing for one of your publications than promoting other people's work.
Sorry if w, you misconstrued my point about "minor-league" position. I didn't mean the company. I meant the position itself. Many public relations "specialist" positions I've seen advertised seem meant for relatively young, inexperienced folks with lots of energy but not all that much savvy.
Sorry. That's me being honest again.
Good luck in your future endeavors, too. But here's some advice for the person who does get the position. While pitching stories to reporters might not be all there is to the job, he or she had better be good at just that if they hope to get your brand the kind of ink or webspace it deserves.
.
Cheers,

Mike Hendricks

To us: [footnote: (Contact) didn’t bother to write back the mealy-mouthed cretin]

It really is sad considering how many talented and professional journalists and PR professionals are out of work and looking for a full-time job. I’ve received a few other applicants from newspaper people, all of whom swallowed their pride like every other job candidate.

(Contact)

Editorializing about who Mike Hendricks is seems counterproductive since, really, you can figure out what kind of person we’re dealing with here. His “sweet talk” doesn’t fool anyone. Hendricks is clearly a guy –here we go – who thinks he walks on water, when in fact he is perilously tiptoeing across a thin sheet of ice.

As a PR practitioner who takes pride in my work and respects my colleagues, I think that having someone of Hendricks’ ilk enter our profession would be shameful. Similarly, for journalists who believe in their work and commitment to delivering news in a fair & balanced way (here’s $1 to Fox News), their embarrassment toward this so-called colleague must be already palpable.

Apparently, his readers feel it too. It comes as no surprise that in a July 2009 poll, Hendricks was voted to be “the next news columnist to lose his job at The Kansas City Star.” The bridges he has burned are strewn throughout the fields of the fruited American plains.

Since I don’t live in Kansas or Missouri, at least not yet, I wasn’t familiar with Mike’s work and so I decided to check out what type of “journalist” I was dealing with here. After all, this blog supports PR people (Up With PR People!) and I may need to do business with him, right? The Star is one of the region’s major newspapers.

Guess what, everyone? Turns out Mike Hendricks is a hack who deserves nothing more than to be outed for his extreme awfulness!

Here, he writes a piece about the evils of blogging, and posts it on the Internet. The “commenters” rip him to shreds in an instant. His body of work is docile, even for a Metro columnist... In fact, nearly every one of his pieces gets shredded to bits by readers but still he soldiers on.

Also, Hendricks isn’t exactly Steinbeckian when it comes to crafting prose. The very morning that he sent his horrendous email sort-of-not-asking for a job, this sentence actually appeared in his column, in regard to what he sees as a bad choice by the municipal government last year:

Yeah, well, that sure worked out swell now, didn’t it?

Mike, you get PAID to use proper grammar. Give it a try.

With that I’d like to share some of what someone else thinks about Hendricks. A local Kansas City blogger, who is a bit more plugged-in to the goings on in KC than I am, has much to say about Mike’s new blog with the friendly, yet blandly unoriginal title “Mike’s Place.” I have to take this blogger’s word for it, because – hold your breath—you can only access “Mike’s Place” if you are a pre-approved reader.

Hello? PRE-APPROVED READER?

********

Anyway, have fun with this excerpted post from a blogger who you’ll want to hug:

TKC EXCLUSIVE!!! MIKE HENDRICKS IS THE WORST HACK IN THE KANSAS CITY AREA AND NOW HE HAS A BLOG!!!

Normally, I like to encourage other bloggers but today I have to break tradition.

After having his salary cut to shreds by The Star . . . Underachieving JoCo columnist Mike Hendricks is now taking his (poorly) written tripe to the local blogosphere.

Even the title makes me want to puke.

He's calling it "Mike's Place" as if it was yet another prosaic JoCo tavern where the "men" in that tiny white village go to hide from their wives.

I never thought it was possible for me to so vehemently despise another human being I have never met but here we are . . .

I can only hope that he'll cancel his blog out of pure embarrassment.

And here's where he is making a mistake . . . Without the help of the Star's army of distributors wasting paper all over the City . . .

MIKE HENDRICKS IS NOW NOTHING MORE THAN YET ANOTHER WHITE MAN WITH AN OPINION!!!

A lame and under researched opinion at that . . . Still, bloggers should rejoice because Hendricks has heretofore talked (and written) an endless variety of smack about bloggers. Now, because of a cut in salary and hopefully because he'll soon be fired . . . Mike Hendricks is nothing more than a blogger.

*******

Mike Hendricks does not respect PR, nor does he care for PR folks. Even beyond that, I wonder if Hendricks grasps the usefulness of anything but himself? He does not get the Internet, does not understand what it means to communicate with others, doesn’t play nicely, and as you’ve seen on this page, he’s just bad. Not Michael Jackson bad either.

Would you give this man a job? After all, here is a hate-filled guy with a bizarrely-realized self-image. Reminds me of something the phonetically-similar Hendricks (Jimi, that is) said not so long ago…

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

Twitter @laermer and @badpitch

---
8/26 UPDATE: Comments on this post are now closed. Feedback from readers, the ones who've identified themselves, has made it clear this is not a post that represents our three years of content here. We're taking this to heart and we're already reflecting it in content moving forward.

Due to the tone of the last few anonymous comments, which we've left up for posterity, I've made the decision to close comments. If someone wants to add their opinion to this post, please feel free to email us at badpitchblog AT gmail DOT com. Thanks. -- Kevin Dugan

Don't Get Cute With Naming

2009-08-20T00:15:00.025-04:00

By Guest Blogger Susan E. Jacobsen

I recently came across a blog with relatively decent content, but with just the oddest of names -- Outhouse General Counsel. I had a hard time taking what the blogger wrote seriously because I kept getting caught up in the blog/company name. It struck me as odd and I couldn’t help but shake my head. It was a play on words and while he explained his (il)logic for the name, it really would not jive with anyone outside of the industry he was targeting. The concept made sense, and certainly would be a service that small businesses would welcome, but I couldn’t help but wonder, "Did he really want to hurt his chances of getting business because someone was a bit befuddled by his word choice?!" You may have a fantastic story to back up your company name but without the right positioning - from the get-go - trying to be "cute" can backfire and bite you where it hurts...your bottom, er, bottom-line.

Whether you’re talking about launching a new product, company, some content or blog, there will always be much debate over what constitutes the correct name. Some look to state the obvious, some stay in the abstract and others, well, they just want to be cutesie. It’s easy to get caught up in the name game... spend thousands upon thousands for a professional “naming firm” to do research, competitive analysis and focus groups, or brainstorm with friends and colleagues on a white board.

Any type of name can be effective if it has the right marketing and communications strategy to back it up. As Richard (@laermer) noted in Jumping off the Branding Bandwagon, companies that "bring differentiation to life through compelling communications that motivate customers to love—and buy—it" are the ones that will stand out.

Dennis Goris (@DennisGoris), who has acted as a sounding board for me when I have an idea or creative whim, has been at the helm of identity projects for a number of companies. His work includes name and tagline development. Dennis told me that people make similar mistakes when it comes to the moniker, regardless of what it is they want to name. He subscribes to not "naming the book" until after it's written: “Chances are very high that the perfect title is already somewhere in the copy. This process is more about uncovering the name than thinking one up,” he said. And while that doesn't mean you can't uncover something clever, but “you have a better chance of getting the right name vs. something off base, but so cute you can't let go of.”

It’s easy to get caught up in what you think versus what others will see (“believing your own bull crap”). Sometimes we’re too close to see big picture from potential clients’ viewpoint. Take this photograph for instance. Stare at the image of Einstein for about 30 seconds, and then close your eyes, step away from your computer and then open your eyes. Who do you see now?

A name should convey value (e.g., uniqueness, differentiation) of whatever you are touting—that goes without saying. As entrepreneurs embark on new ventures and others jump on the bandwagon of the blog, the challenge of finding the right name – one that has not been used or disabused – is supremely challenging. Think about why you started your business or what you hoped to accomplish with your entity. What were the criteria you began with? What are your business objectives? What name resonates? What about with others? The best companies and names speak for themselves. Wikipedia's legendary list of company names and naming origins is a handy (and fun) resource.

Blackberry, the stylish top product of Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM), wanted a name for its proud lead product. Ten years ago, the word "blackberry" referred to a spiky purplish-black fruit you probably enjoyed only when it was turned into sweet preserves. Blackberry today is synonymous with an incredibly addictive (CrackBerry) PDA with which we email, phone and browse, among other delicious attributes. When the corporation set out to re-name its lowbrow “RIM pager,” they hired Lexicon Branding. Lexicon’s leader steered away from names that were directly linked to the word email, as their research showed that the word at the time “increased clients' blood pressure.” They soon came to realize that the little buttons on the device appeared to be a “collection of seeds,” so they explored names that were in fact—fruity. While strawberry, melon and, even, veggies were discussed, they chose the blackest of berries. They thought it to be pleasing to most ears and, at the time, the device was entirely black.

Choosing an arbitrary name is risky, sure, but Blackberry had the marketing muscle to support the investment of a new name. Blackberry had an advantage in choosing the name of a fruit because the US Patent and Trademark Office will not trademark generic names.

Product and service naming is a process filled with creative input that, too, requires legal know-how. You to need to create legally permissible, yet creative and unforgettable, names to stop people in their tracks. Those of us in PR then promote these new ditties, so it helps when we believe in what we’re promoting. When we’re hindered by a name that doesn’t resonate - or worse has a negative connation – we’re pushed on to a troubling high wire. The marketing and promotional plans for a name have to coincide with the development of the name itself. Whether it’s a large organization or a solo practitioner, the added benefit of fresh perspectives, from different POVs (the client versus public) is invaluable.

Being cute won’t cut it. As Twitter ingratiates itself into 140-character self into more companies, industries, sports leagues, et al, people continue to feel the need to “Twitterize” everything; that is, putting TW in front of a word to make it cute or funny or quippish! There are Twitter Dictionaries for all things of the tweet. But as HARO founder Peter Shankman (@skydiver) told us in a tweet: “There is a higher than 98% chance that putting “TW" in front of a word is NOT cute, but rather, makes u look sad.”

Companies who wish to be clever but not smart about product/service names are falling short in this networked world; frankly, they have no respect for the audience. We’ve all come to expect quick, decisive results and we look to the products and services we use to help us achieve our goals. Being stymied by a weird name is a distraction we don’t have time for. Take into account the focused group you want to reach what matters to them! Deliver the value your name stands for, or should stand for!

Bottom line: Don’t be cute – be good.

PR pro and all around fantastic person Susan E. Jacobsen @susanejacobsen and at her firm’s site www.luv2xlpr.com

Simply Put? Thank You

2009-08-19T11:59:00.005-04:00

We’d be remiss if we didn’t do one FINAL thank you for the response we’ve gotten from the Bad Pitch Blog Night School (During the Day).

We’re most gracious for all of the feedback from the attendees. The feedback and questions are already influencing future content. Some of you also asked about a 201 follow-up course. Drop us a line with topics you want to learn more about.

But this event couldn’t have been so successful without help from a variety of folks scattered across the web, including:

Chris Abraham, Sally Hogshead, Shel Holtz & Neville Hobson, Geoff Livingston, David Parmet, Jeremy Pepper, PR Newser, Ragan Communications, Brian Solis and Greg Verdino.

Even HARO head honcho Peter Shankman noted his “favorite blog” was having a call “worth checking out.” Needless to say we appreciate everyone’s kind words.

We even appreciate the “unkind” words. To that end Nick Balkin also gets a shout out. His recent guest post came about from some snarky tweets he posted during the event. We’re all about snarky.

Scholarship Winners. Let’s Talk.
We said we’d let the scholarship winners pitch and we weren’t kidding. Let us know if you want to pitch an idea, yourself or a guest post topic.

Until then, thanks again…'nuff said and back to work!

Jumping Off the Branding Bandwagon

2009-08-13T23:01:00.005-04:00

During the past decade everyone seemed to be—or pretended to be—in the business of branding. The majority of ad agencies, PR firms, Hollywood agents, management consultants, and even many focus group participants, jumped on the got-to-brand bandwagon with glee and abandon.

Every purveyor of fine branding boasts a proprietorship over unique methodologies, outstanding insights, and uber-talented staff that will transform a product or service into something they can dub larger than life.

That is, a Great Brand.

After several good years shelling out seven, eight or sometimes nine figures on branding schemes, today’s marketing director is under mind-numbing pressure to deliver tangible business results right away! A growing number are waking up to a sobering fact that branding has failed to provide anything but bills.

Most “great” brands, we are learning, are not built on any branding. In fact, the fantastic brands are made of altogether different stuff. Branding creates reality through perception! Outrageously important brands create perception through reality. Branding seeks to gloss over a lack of differentiation, while the top brands are built from the inside out on–you guessed it—differentiation.

Those PowerPoint-hogging branding aficionados are snap-quick to claim all the credit for the success of Apple, the VW Beetle, Mini, Nike, Harley-Davidson, etc. The branders cite the outstanding logos or creative work (and an accessorizing Facebook fan group) as reasons why the fantastic brands are so prominent. A convenient confusion of cause and effect! These brands didn’t become ubiquitous because of marketing. You know this and can give your own examples. Unique and differentiated propositions made for good marketing programs. That is, Apple products are easier to use, VW Beetles have looked different from any car for decades, and great athletes use Nike products. As for Mini, gee, it’s so darn adorable.

Really, the best brands make for marvelous communications because they speak for themselves. Not by coincidence do most ads for VW and Apple feature with product placed solo with a white background. A newfangled Jetta or iTouch is unusual enough, so anything else in the frame would distract. Or let’s talk about Harley, which can be identified from blocks away by its gurgling roar.

Branding will produce clones. Slap a competitor’s logo on most ads and it works just as well–and just as poorly. Having nothing to say for themselves, the "suckers of branding" are addicted to borrowed equity, from babies to breasts, heart-wrenching melodies to really lame jokes, and (ugh) leafy roads to the cliché about that yucky road of life.

Does anyone believe that a, ahem, Buick was ever Tiger’s car of choice even for a rental? That Brooke Shields cared a lick about the VW she was pushing—besides the fact it paid for her hair stylist? That Celine was ever in love with the Sebring (and how did she ever learn to pronounce it)?

Marketing directors serious about building intensely loved brands know effective brand building means spending time with the real product builders: engineers, food scientists, technologists, and outside consultants who can test the brand with astute consumers. These efforts help create a differentiation that defines the cool-as-crap product. The collective insight gives focus so agencies and internal folks do what they do best: bring differentiation to life through compelling communications that motivate customers to love—and buy—it.

Motivation is what we look for in a superb, unstoppable brand.

…Twitter @laermer

PR People: Stop Being Bad at Stuff and Read This

2009-08-11T10:23:00.011-04:00

This entry by Nick Balkin, guest poster.

Editor's Note: Nick Balkin's Twitter is located at @nickbalkin. An earlier version of this post had the wrong username. Apologies for the confusion.

Face it: you went into PR because you wanted to be a superstar. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to work hard to build your name and reputation before you score those VIP passes. Lucky for you, I've learned some extremely helpful tips and tricks to navigate the murky waters of being totally awesome, and today only, I’m going to share them with you.

1. Express Yourself

The look of your press release is very important. The first rule of emailing is that EVERY SUBJECT LINE YOU SEND SHOULD USE ALL CAPS AND END WITH AT LEAST FIVE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!! THE MORE EXCLAMATION POINTS, THE BETTER!!!!!!! As for the content itself, black on white is played out. Jazz it up! Change your text and background colors to, say, pink on red, or teal on rainbow, yellow on orange. Anything attention-grabbing and bright will do. Also, use a fun font! Comic Sans looks very professional. For more ideas, visit any MySpace page belonging to a 14 year old. PR GOLD!!!!!!!!

2. Play Hard to Get

Like Joyce's Ulysses or any David Lynch film, a well-crafted pitch should be nearly impenetrable to mere mortals. Here's a neat exercise: Take your "hook" or story idea and bury it under layers of lofty, abstract, dense prose. For good measure, spell things phonetically and use random, Faulknerian italics. Your target audience, after all, is comprised of reporters – and we all know they have lots of time to read heavy things. It's their job, not yours, to gauge the relevance of your information. And don't forget, jargon is your friend – it not only spotlights your sophisticated, in-the-know, vocabulary, but it also says to the reporter: I respect your intelligence.

3. Wear Them Down

As soon as you've emailed your release to a reporter, wait 10-15 minutes, then send a follow-up email reminding him to read it. A few (2-3) minutes later, call the reporter and remind him to read both your email and the original release. If he doesn't pick up the phone, just go ahead and read him your entire press release, word for word, over a series of voicemails. With all the information journalists get, they’ll appreciate the transcription—it’s really cool! Repeat for five consecutive days. When you get a "No." or a "Please stop." or an "I'm a police reporter, I don't care about the 10 best ways to wear a romper, I don't even know what a romper is," then you're making an impression. Damn – give yourself a pat on the back!

4. Quantity Trumps Quality

In a perfect world, PR people would carefully tailor each pitch. But who has that kind of time or bandwidth these days? Thank goodness for mass emails (or "e-blasts”). Skip the “BCC:” function. The address of each and every recipient should be listed in the "To:" field so they can size up the competition. Don’t forget to always offer exclusives.

5. Know When to Pitch

Just like in comedy, timing is everything. Friday, 5 p.m., before a holiday weekend: a publicist's dream. At no other time will you find media types more focused and relaxed and therefore more open to your story ideas. So what are you waiting for? That wallpaper convention isn't going to pitch itself – plus, it's only four months away.

6. Lead Time, Schmead Time

When it comes to deadlines, the media can be such drama queens – but a great story will always get coverage, right? Right? The be-all, end-all of your profession is (drum roll) your press release! Don't rush it. It must be fully realized – bio'd, logo'd, and approved by all bosses, partners, and sponsors – before fit for distribution. Don't compromise your art. Make sure everyone makes a note about a comma or a colon. It should take at least three weeks of rounds!

7. Those Scary Bloggers

Bloggers, like drug dealers, can be reluctant to talk until they know you're "cool." The fastest way to cozy up? Be an active commenter on their sites. Unfortunately, this means actually having to read their (sometimes very lengthy) posts. To get around this, I suggest making a list of “stock comments" that work in virtually any context. A few to get you started: "Excellent post! It's high time we start thinking outside the box" or "Your thought leadership is inspiring!” “Bravo, sir/madame, bravo" or "Strategy-driven synergistic gold! Call me." Post them liberally.

8. Social Media Mastery

PR pros rejoice! The Twitter Revolution is upon us. Gosh isn’t it great—at 140 characters of nonsense we can have tons of fun. Begin each tweet with "For Immediate Release:" so people aren't taken by surprise. As for Facebook, friend-request as many media contacts as possible and be the first to "like" their status updates; do this a lot. Take an active interest in their personal lives by commenting on all of their family photos, particularly the babies of friends they post. And always pitch to a reporter's "wall" – this way, the whole community knows they're welcome to get in on the fun.

9. A Great Photo Can Sell a Story

It's commonly known that there is only one way to send images over the Internet – via email attachment. This can be a bummer, since print media folks always seem to want their images supersized. Sometimes they'll say an image is "not hi-res enough," and it's really confusing because here you are looking at the exact same image and it's huge – on your laptop monitor and on the Web page you stole it from. (I, like you, am sure it is a Mac/PC thing.) But the solution to this problem is easier than you'd think. Open the image in Photoshop, change the resolution to like 300 dpi. Don't be alarmed if your picture now looks like a screen shot from Pong – that's normal.

10. Stand Up for Your Clients

When a reporter screws up – misquotes you, pans your client's new edible line of Crocs, calls during your lunch hour, etc. – it's your responsibility to make the reporter’s life (whatever he’s got going for him) a living hell. Ban them from your e-list. Unfollow them on Twitter. Make zany comments about them on your FriendFeed. Throw a zombie or sheep at them. Teach them a lesson. This is war.

Speaking of lessons, these are absolutely the only ten you'll need throughout your entire professional life. Remember, PR isn't all smoke and mirrors, and name dropping, and hot parties, and lookin' good while you sip your free martinis at the lowliest dive on the block. That's only 95% of what we do. To make it in this business you have to one day get your hands dirty. And that, I'm afraid, is the one really ugly truth.

****

Twitter @nickbalkin

Night School Scholarship Winners

2009-07-28T20:11:00.002-04:00

This is our last ~~pimp,~~ er, post for Bad Pitch Night School.

You remember Bad Pitch Night School, right? The viral PR teleseminar that everybody who’s anybody keeps talking about?

Yes, we’re kidding. In fact, we’re actually very thankful and humbled and appreciative.

We’re also pleased to announce our scholarship winners.

Students
Evan Strange, Angela Hernandez, Monica Fineis, Donna Wilcox, Jessica Slevin

Professionals
Jamie Favreau, DanielleDiGiovanni, Claudia Mejia-Haffner, Neil Hamel, Jackie Chazan

Follow them for any #badpitch tweets during the seminar.

Scholarship winners also get an opportunity to pitch the Bad Pitch Blog readers. But that’s a post for another day. We’re gearing up for tomorrow’s call--which is hours away.

We hope you can join us. "It’ll be better than Cats!"

Paid Third-Party Twitter Tweets – Seriously?!

2009-07-28T17:10:00.002-04:00

From Our Favorite Guest—Susan E. Jacobsen

Would you ask someone to handwrite a thank you note for you and sign their name? Would you stop a stranger on the street to call your client and deliver bad news?

I didn’t think so.

So why, then, would you tarnish your shiny-as-brand-new-penny relationship with a reporter or publication by paying someone to send out your messages via Twitter?

Well, a site called Muck Rack apparently thinks you will, as they become the latest in the string of money making ventures linked to new media platforms. When the service was launched recently, it was described accordingly as:

"...a site primarily known for aggregating tweets from journalists in real-time, has just pressed go on a new type of press release — the one line Twitter-style release."

Then, introduced a wonderful new offer for less-than-hip PR novices:

"Muck Rack's now monetizing by offering a new service for PR pros to publish one line press releases, up to 130 characters long, that can include links to other media and press kits, at a rate of $1 per character with a $50 minimum." (Grammar sic.)

The Muck Rack geniuses posted this information to their site, essentially eschewing their own service in favor of, ya know, a method that makes sense. Nice going, boys and girls.

I commend them for their ingenious creativity in trying to “connect” PR pros with media contacts but, really though, using Twitter as a paid vehicle is not the one you should be driving. If you are already tweeting your little heart out and have built a decent following, there is no advantage to paying a third party a buck per character to send out your tweet. At this moment, @muckrack has more than 3800 followers and yet a quick glance reveals that those F’s are mainly PR folks and hardly media. Muck Rack is counting on reporters to go to its site to see the list of announcements?! A mighty big ($1 dollar per character) assumption.

Mashable reported a few days after this revolutionary service was announced that only two original releases were shared via Muck Rack, "one courtesy of launch partner PepsiCo and a rather mundane update from HootSuite, a Twitter Web service."

Do those qualify as announcements?

There are no doubt worthwhile third party conduits that can assist with announcement promotion, such as BusinessWire, MarketWire and PR Newswire. These tools are far more powerful: customers target the distribution by industry, geography and topic to coincide with their overall PR outreach strategy. Having that other party tweet your announcement lumps you/company/client with everyone else in the same twitter stream. How will you stand out?

PR pros live and die by their relationships with media and the influential online types. As quickly as you’re seen as a star in your client’s eyes for getting them a much coveted placement, so too can you be burned for missing that one fine opportunity because you were unable to connect with the right reporter. Relying on the "other party" to send out your announcement among the masses is not sound strategy, nor will it strengthen your personal relationship with members of the media.

Muckrack.com is a cool place for PR folks to track tweets on Twitter written by journalists and to follow reporters that are covering topics and industries you care about. But just as you can’t force a reporter to follow you back, you can’t be sure that your release – as tweeted by Muck Rack – will be seen by those same journalists. If a journalist is working on a story and looks to Twitter for additional information, they will likely use Twitter’s search application, and you know what? Their search term will come up in Muck Rack just as easily as it will come up in your own fabulous Twitter stream.

When used correctly, Twitter is a communicator’s dream. As I’ve learned first-hand, you can connect with reporters on your own, or through a re-tweet of someone else. It provides another opportunity to get your message out – to be heard – and to strengthen you or your company’s brand. If you aren’t personally engaged with those who are following you, your efforts will be futile. You will be in the same place as you were before. Like Hollywood agents trying to lure newbies to the acting scene, don’t be swayed by third party vendors who say they can "make you famous" and all you need is their help. You’re smarter than that, right?

You know what needs to be done –connect on a personal level. You’ll be glad you did, and richer for it too.

Twitter via us at @laermer @badpitch @prblog and @susanejacobsen

Susan E. Jacobsen is head soot sweeper at LUV2XLPR, Inc.

Bombastic ≠ Strategic

2009-07-25T18:26:00.007-04:00

We all know the challenge of standing out at big events like BlogHer, ComicCon and (back in the day) leviathans like Comdex.

Electronic Arts is learning about that challenge right now as their "Sin to Win" promotion is doing more than standing out at ComicCon. It's pissing people off. I've gotten notes from PRSA and a colleague attending BlogHer wondering "wtf?!"

Evidently the promotion revolved around their new Dante's Inferno game. People were being encouraged to have their pictures taken while committing acts of lust with booth babes.

Electronic Arts has since apologized and some are wondering if this was a planned strategy. Evidently Electronics Arts even faked a protest over the same game earlier this summer. Whenever something stupid like this happens, the media wonder if it was planned to generate more ink.

Bombastic ≠ Strategic
Standing out at trade shows in particular can be tough. More than a decade ago, at a client's trade show, I was impressed when one exhibitor was allowing attendees to make their own tie dye t-shirts with the company's logo on it. There booth had a lot of traffic with long lines as a result of the giveaway. When I told my client about this he asked me what the company sold. It was not more than 10 minutes later and I couldn't remember.

Anyone can piss someone off if they try hard enough. I'm even reminded of a quote from Spinal Tap when someone objected to their album cover for Smell the Glove. "That's nothing. You should have seen the cover they wanted to publish."

But a fine blend of sizzle and steak is required to stand out for the right reasons. And whether or not the Electronic Arts stunts were planned or spontaneous, fake or real, NONE of this is strategic. It's desperate.