First, in early December there was a massive twitter-storm about a sponsored post social media consultant Chris Brogan wrote on his Dad-o-matic blog. Long story short, his post was part of an Izea campaign for Kmart, Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang posed some legitimate questions about sponsored posts , and a Twitter storm erupted.

I was mostly offline that weekend, but the general gist was that many questioned Chris’s integrity for writing a sponsored post, arguing that it compromised his objectivity and ethics.

When I came back online at the end of the weekend and saw the fallout, including more than a few posts discussing Chris’s actions, including his, all I could say was “huh?” I had seen the post some time earlier on Dad-o-matic and really didn’t think much of it.

While I have my concerns about the paid post model, particularly in its earliest forms which did not require disclosure, Chris was very clear that this was a sponsored post, the content was appropriate for Dad-o-matic, and there was a charity angle. No biggie, and I had a hard time imagining how participating in this Izea campaign could compromise Chris’s ethics or expertise. As I tweeted, folks should be less judgmental, and perhaps look to their own glass house.

Twits indeed.

There’s no question that the Izea model is an improvement over predecessor Pay Per Post. But… I still have a few concerns. Here are some topics that I plan to explore in the coming year.

• The model seems much closer to mass market advertising than it does to blogger relations. Will big companies take this expedient route, thinking it a shortcut to robust relationships with their customers online?
• Some sponsored campaigns are starting to have a cookie-cutter feel. Variations on theme of the blogger shopping spree or giveaway product, and contests for the blog’s readers. There’s nothing wrong with any of these approaches. I recommend them to clients. But, without a specific creative angle that reinforces branding, when do they all start to blur?
• Is the sponsored post model really just for big companies with big budgets? And big bloggers with big audiences? What happened to the long tail and niche markets? Something for everyone? How do smaller companies compete? Ditto, niche bloggers with smaller but loyal audiences.

Topic Two: Embargoes.

The most recent salvo comes from Michael Arrington at TechCrunch who announced mid-month with his usual fanfare that TechCrunch would no longer honor embargoes.

“PR firms are out of control. Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to.”

I don’t think anyone was particularly surprised; Arrington’s anti-PR polemic has grown increasingly strident over the years, sometimes for good cause, sometimes not so much. This post was just the latest in a long line.

It is also more than a warning shot that he’ll break the embargo. Read between the lines - Arrington wants to break the tech news, and unless you give him an exclusive, he’s increasingly likely to NOT cover your news.

What does this have to do with blogs? You can’t really generalize the typical blogger’s reaction to an embargo request from Arrington. TechCrunch isn’t a blog; it’s a tech publication that uses the blog form. It’s competing with c|net, CNN, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and so on. Companies have to decide if TechCrunch is the most important outlet for their news. If so, giving Arrington the exclusive — a real exclusive — may make sense. If not, TechCrunch gets the news when it hits the wire, and you may not get any coverage there at all. That’s your call.

Will bloggers honor embargoes? I believe they will, if approached with respect. Will they honor an embargo that is noted on the top of a mass emailed press release? Unlikely. A journalist wouldn’t either.

In the coming year, we’ll talk about some of the positive ways companies can include bloggers in their confidential plans. In some ways it is far easier than with journalists. Remember, bloggers are your customers too. They like to be involved with your products at an early stage, and will keep your confidence.

Topic Three. Regular readers know how much I love lists and rankings. Not.

On more than one occasion, I’ve discussed the flaws in these rankings on Marketing Roadmaps, and I follow my friend Ike Pigott’s periodic exposes on how to game the systems with delight.

Erin Kotecki Vest, known to many as the Queen of Spain, raised the topic again last month. Her complaint started with the recent rise of Twitter ranking mechanisms, but the comments quickly expanded to embrace the issue in total. And particularly how these faulty constructs often are used to imply legitimacy, expertise and influence.

That’s what we’ll look at in the coming year. How do you determine a blog’s influence? Or a blogger’s expertise? The ranking systems, flawed as they are, impart some information, but we need to look much much farther than that. Most Internet ranking systems can be gamed and use flawed inputs. Business decisions should not be made on the basis of a popularity contest.

As Groucho Marx once said:

“I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.”

Finally, please check out Toby Bloomberg’s 2006/2009 retrospective post. Going into 2006, she asked a number of social media bloggers about their wishes for the coming year. She reached out to us all again this year, and it is very interesting to see how things have changed. And yet not.

I’ll leave you with a bagpipe group’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne and Amazing Grace.

Happy New Year!

Because I also liked both products, I am going to make some suggestions on what they could have done instead.

The first was sent to me from the pr agency for New York Women in Communications. I apparently am on their emailing list as I get these announcements on a regular basis.

Not a total miss. I am in communications and write about gender issues from time to time, so I actually might be interested. If I lived in New York or wrote a calendar section for a blog or website. Which I do not.

It’s also just a press release with no cover note, which regular readers know is a practice I deplore.

However, the content is interesting. I wish I could go. How could they make this pitch relevant for me and more successful for them?

First, add a cover note that acknowledges that they know I am a Boston-area marketing blogger interested in gender issues and women in the workforce, so they thought I might be interested in the event should I be in NYC that week. Sending a cold pitch about an event that is not in the blogger’s region is a non-starter unless you plan to pay some or all of the expenses for the blogger to attend.

It’s different if you have a relationship with the blogger. You issue the invite, and the blogger makes his decision about whether it is worth it to him to foot the bill to attend. If New York Women in Communications isn’t planning on purchasing my train ticket and paying for my hotel room, it has to give me another good reason for caring about the event.

For example, ask me straight out if I know any women in the New York area who would be interested. This lets them grow their list by referral, if I reply, and even if I don’t, it may make me think to forward the news to friends and colleagues. The news about their event then becomes a value-added service I offer to my network. And, who knows I might even write about it on the blog.

Finally, give me an explicit option to opt-out of these notices. Sure I can figure out how to send email to the flack, but it is much classier for the organization to offer to remove me from its list.

Our second example was forwarded by a mom blogger friend.

Cute. Very cute shirts. My friend even said if she had little boys instead of little girls, she might be interested.

Once again, a promising product but the pitch is not relevant to the blogger. She writes a personal blog about her life, her family and her daughters.

Relevance. It truly is the secret sauce of blogger relations.

For a kids fashion or shopping blog, the pr person’s very minimalist approach would be appreciated. It’s already relevant. But it’s not enough for a personal blogger.

If agencies are going to continue purchasing broad parent blogger lists, which is clearly the case here, they must craft a pitch that adds value for the blogger even if the age range or genders of her children don’t match the product.

While my personal preference is  that flacks would do a better job targeting and not send pitches for boys’ products to parents of girls or products for teen girls to parents of toddler boys, I realize that this is a longshot. Way too much work for the typical agency faced with deadlines and bottom line pressures.

So if you can’t be spot-on with relevance all the time, you’ve got to make sure you’ve added value. Here, there’s a simple solution  — offer product to the blogger to giveaway on the blog. Even if a parent blogger doesn’t have a little boy, some of her readers will. This wouldn’t work for every product, but in this case, the shirts are organic and cute, two compelling attributes when combined with free product.

What else might these two groups do to improve their pitches? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

This bad pitch gets the Grinch Award for crass commercialism and totally missing the point of Christmas.

More than 100 years ago, Francis Church reassured a young girl about Santa Claus with words that created a picture that still resonates today. This service, on the other hand, suggests lying to your kids with faked photographs. Bad enough, but that’s  not what they are pitching.

It’s really a thinly disguised affiliate marketing pitch.

However, the blogger to whom this was sent does not run advertising or review products. She’s also Jewish. If you are counting, that’s three strikes, and makes it crystal clear that the flack has never read the blog.

If you are going to pitch Christmas, at least get one thing right: Christmas is about GIVING, not about how much money we can make off our friends and readers. Donate to charity. Give toys for tots. Something to show that you are not the Burgermeister.

Not to mention, the product is just yucky. If you choose to share Santa with your children, there are so many ways to make him real that reinforce the spirit of the holiday and the imagination of the child. You don’t need some faked photo.

If you are going to call on Santa to help with your product or your pitch, make sure what you’re offering has the right holiday spirit. Lying to your kids does not qualify.

Today’s clip is, of course, You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch:

As we were driving up to our house in Vermont last Friday, my eight year-old son asked me if I believed in Santa Claus. It’s been a couple years since he last asked me this question, and I responded the same way this year as I did then: Do you believe in Santa Claus?

He assured me that he still believed, and I in turn assured him that that was what really mattered.

This exchange however reminded me of the timeless words of newsman Francis Pharcellus Church when he replied, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

In this time of economic uncertainty, and no matter what religion we practice or holiday we observe, I think it would do us all some good to carry a little bit of Mr. Church’s Santa in our hearts.

“DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
“Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
“Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

“VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
“115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.”

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

- source, Newseum

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

I do, and I will forever.

I’ll start with the nice one. First, some facts. This is another pitch for a shapewear product, which is always a dicey proposition of the “does this dress make me look fat?” variety. In fact, I discussed this pitch with two mom bloggers via email, one who was initially offended and one who quite liked the pitch. Further proof, by the way, and pun intended, that one size does not fit all.

While I find the product name unfortunate — Yummie Tummie just doesn’t have the allure that the name  Spanx has — I write about the pitch, not the product. And this is a decent one. While it includes  product information, it isn’t solely about the shapewear. The pitch adds value with the content at the EatDrinkandBeYummie microsite and offers product for both review and a giveaway on the blogger’s site, two tactics that are at the top of my list for a good pitch.  The intro flash is really quite cute, although don’t watch on a slow connection. Like all flash, it needs speed.

Marketers take note: a significant benefit of a dedicated microsite is that it is far easier to measure the results than a campaign that sends all web traffic to the home page.

Negatives. Not too many.  It seems like they used a broad mom blogger list for the outreach, and in the instance I mentioned above where the blogger was a bit offended, part of the problem was they pitched her for the wrong blog. She writes a number of different blogs, each with its own editorial purpose, and the juxtaposition of the pitch with a specific and not appropriate blog was jarring. The broad nature of the pitch could also have been a problem. I’d be interested in hearing from other women who received it what their reactions were.

It also seems like the offer of the review and giveaway product is contingent upon coverage, and if you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you know my mantra: if the pitch is good, you don’t need to ask them to write.

Nevertheless, it’s a nice pitch, especially in counterpoint to last week’s scummy pitch for arm girdles. For proving that it is possible to pitch shapewear to women without implying that we’re fat, the Festive Fruitcake Award goes to Yummie Tummie and its agency Rocket XL.  (By the way, Santa, if you are reading, I wouldn’t mind a Yummie Tummie in my Christmas stocking.)

The naughty pitch isn’t so much naughty as it is nasty, but nasty doesn’t work too well with today’s holiday song (below). As noted above, women and weight is a sensitive issue. Whether we have too much, too little or just think we have. Fat, thin, heavy, skinny, flabby. I don’t know many American women who don’t have some issue with weight, and quite frankly, our culture encourages women to have a negative body image. That’s not a battle I can fight with this blog.

Except maybe a little bit.

I have a problem with a pitch to mom bloggers that implies that a size 8 is a plus size.

What exactly is a frame adjusted size 2?

The pitch also includes the by-now expected Oprah reference. Hullo. She can talk about her weight as much as SHE wants, and shill as many related products as SHE wants. The rest of you? Back off. Stop using her as a pitch point. She didn’t endorse your product and using her name to game the search engines is bad form. Granted, this was just a mention; the whole pitch wasn’t built around her, but still.

The other major sin of this pitch is the usual broad brush. As usual, it seems as though they sent a press release to a mom blogger list without understanding how it might be received. That’s stupid.

But the reason they get the BIG FAT LUMP OF COAL AWARD is for sending a press release that insults many of the women who will receive it by basically telling them that yes, that dress makes you look fat because you are.

Now, clearly I have an issue with the whole premise of the book, and I daresay the blogger who forwarded the pitch does too, but I am certain there are some bloggers who would not. Somewhere. The good news? If you are interested in this title, which will be published January 2, just wait a bit and I’ll bet you can get a REALLY good price at Better World Books, our good pitch award winner from last Friday. ‘Cause I just don’t see them flying off the shelves…

I’ll be back with a few more naughty and nice pitches before Christmas, but for now, please enjoy Bruce Springsteen’s version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the inspiration for today’s post title.

First, the Green Christmas Award goes to Better World Books. The folks over at Alpha Mom sent me this pitch and wrote about it earlier this week.

What’s good about this pitch? First and foremost, the content is a great match for the Alpha Mom site. Green, books, charity donation, carbon offset. Perfect. Second, the timing. It was sent to Alpha Mom in plenty of time to be included in the site’s holiday coverage. Finally, and you’ll hear this from me again about other good pitches: the brevity. It’s a good story, and the writer doesn’t wreck it with lots of fluff and puff. She lays it out in perfect order: need, pitch, facts, close. Well done, Margaret. I hope you have a very green and merry holiday.

I struggled a bit with the name for the next award, and even called she-who-knows-all, my mom, for a sanity check for my idea. She laughed at the original thought, but suggested a slight twist, so with no further ado, the Christmas Princess Award goes to the Nikon Look Good in Pictures campaign featuring Carson Kressley. Agency: MWW Group

The pitch was sent to me by Allison Blass, the rep at MWW.  She noted in her email that the campaign had a number of different pitches geared toward style blogs, wedding blogs, travel blogs and so on. The one above was used for parenting blogs. It’s also not just a holiday pitch, although the family portraits one featured here has a holiday angle.

Here’s why it’s good.

The pitch is short and gets to the point right away. No cutesy schtick trying to make the blogger think Allison reads the blog. She probably does, knowing Allison, but even if she doesn’t,  it doesn’t matter because the pitch is clearly tailored to things most parents find relevant - how to take better pictures of their kids, family photos, vacation photos.

I watched the episode on family portraits. Carrie Sandoval, the professional photographer highlighted in the segment, is a mom and a blogger, and it looks like other segments use a similar tactic — using a photographer with whom the principal audience for the particular segment will identify.

My one concern is while I think the bloggers who get these pitches will check out the video series, I’m not sure how many will actually write about it as there is no incentive to do so. Sure, Carson is funny, but what’s the value-add to the blogger that leads her to give it valuable space on the blog? Folks already committed to Nikon may do something with it, just because. If it fits an editorial requirement for a blog or mainstream media outlet, it might get used. That’s especially relevant for wedding and travel blogs, for whom these topics are a perennial.

Otherwise? Not sure. We’ll see. The campaign was too new for Allison to tell me how it did, but  I hope she’ll be back to us with a report.

That’s it for today’s good holiday pitches. I’ll have one more over the weekend, but for  now, I’ll leave you with the Israel  Kamakawiwo`ole version of What a Wonderful World, the song referenced in today’s post title.

Mele Kalikimaka.

The rest of you? The holiday pitch is generally a bad idea. Engrave it on your eyeballs. Whatever it takes for you to remember that:

• Everyone does not live in the USA;
• Not all bloggers celebrate Christian holidays.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the complete cluelessness of wishing Canadian bloggers “Happy Thanksgiving” in late November given that Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving in mid-October. Our ragged band of Plimoth pilgrims and the somewhat arbitrary late November date? Not relevant.

July 4th? Canada celebrates its independence day a few days earlier, France on Bastille Day July 14th, and England? Well, England celebrates the day in November that some Guy did not blow up Parliament.

Christmas and Easter… Marketers seem to believe that everyone celebrates these Christian holy days.

Not so much.

No matter what the holiday, your holiday oriented pitch stands a pretty good chance of failing UNLESS you’ve done your research and know your target is receptive. For example, me and Christmas? You’ve got a pretty open invitation, and especially if you’ve got new Christmas music.

Most bad pitches ignore these simple rules of research and relevance. Holiday ones are simply more awful because they often try to be cute or clever, and fail. Generally massively.

As in mass email spams, ending with a cheery wish for a Merry Christmas. For example:

Just your run of the mill boring holiday pitch. Except the blogger who received it is Jewish. When she forwarded the pitch to me, she commented that she’s not opposed to writing about other holiday experiences or religions. What offends her, and rightly so, is when companies claim they read the blog, in which she often mentions her religion, and then wish her personally a Merry Christmas.

The truth is, of course, that these holiday wishes are about as personal as mail addressed to “occupant.” It’s a mass-mail merge from a database that inserts the blogger’s name and blog name in the appropriate spots.

If you must do mass mailings about the suitability of your product as a gift, and I really wish you wouldn’t, there’s a reason why the word HOLIDAY is politically correct. Remember it. Holiday gift, not Christmas gift. Happy Holidays, not Merry Christmas.

“Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday” works really well for the whole month of December and generally doesn’t offend anyone.

Read the blog. How many times have you read those words here over the past few years.

If the PR agency that sent this next pitch was actually reading the blogs it spams on a regular basis, it wouldn’t have sent the pitch to the momblogger who forwarded it to me. Or at least I hope it wouldn’t have.

Her comment to me was that the pitch wasn’t that bad, but it mentions the product is designed for African American men. Last she checked, her entire family is white.

She does post pictures of her family. Quite often. If the flack was reading the blog, even sporadically, she would have known this.

Read the blog. It’s the first step toward being relevant.

Our final bad pitch for today isn’t strictly speaking a holiday pitch, but it too uses the “cookie cutter” database approach with unintended humorous effect.

The pitch itself was long and had more than a few problems. But the best part, the very best part, was the salutation which ably illustrates the dangers of mass mail merges.

Really, what more can I say?

For gross violations of mail merge technology and for so ably illustrating the flaws in a mass market, volume approach, these three pitches are awarded the Marketing Roadmaps HOLIDAY COOKIE CUTTER AWARD.

Next up: Not all holiday pitches are bad. What makes one good?

Which is the case with both our tales today.

We’ll start with FLABuLESSU.

There’s so much wrong with this pitch, it is hard to know where to start. I’ll leave aside my issues with the product itself, and focus on the why the pitch sent to mombloggers last week was so awful. If you’d like a good summary of the problems with the product, which is basically a girdle for your upper arms, check out PunditMom.

Back to the pitch.

There is a special place in hell for this type of news release, that uses celebrity names to attract attention, fool search engines and imply some sort of endorsement when in fact there is no such thing. The tactic was trotted out multiple times last fall about products tangentially related to Alaska governor Sarah Palin such as her eyewear, and appears on a regular basis for baby products, tied to whichever celebrity mom is about to or has recently given birth. Angelina Jolie… JLo… Jennifer Garner… Gwen Stefani… And so on.

In the FLABuLESSU pitch, this marginal tactic is then compounded by the subject matter, which is both trivial and offensive. Two extremely powerful and successful women and they want us to identify with them because we all have flabby arms? Puleez. It’s already a shady tactic, but this crosses over into the offensive.

To make matters worse, when a friend of mine emailed the company about how offensive the pitch was, she basically got a brush-off reply that many women love the product, which has been featured on Rachael Ray and in the NY Post. Okay then. That makes all the difference. I guess.

Except not. Neither Caroline Kennedy nor Oprah Winfrey has endorsed this product, and to use their names and images in this fashion is offensive and unethical public relations practice. Which is why the FLABuLESSU pitch gets the first-ever Marketing Roadmaps SCUMBAG AWARD.

And it’s too bad really.  I personally have known women traumatized by their arm flab.  I get it. Don’t agree, but get it. Product fills an unmet market need. Could have been successful. But there are so many better ways to reach out to the target market. Hi-jacking Ms. Kennedy and Ms. Winfrey was unnecessary.

Speaking of Rachael Ray, the PR agency that represents Every Day with Rachael Ray as well as some other food properties seems determined to bury blogger Erika Jurney with recipes, even after multiple email requests to cease and a blog post last May that minced no words. This month’s missives include holiday recipes from Rachael as well as another client.

And then there’s this gem:

Note the date. More than a few months after Erika’s rant about the recipes. And this is only a sample of the many, many pitches Erika has received from this agency, which gets the BURNT SUGAR COOKIE AWARD for not paying attention. Elizabeth, if you were reading Erika’s blog, you’d know that she doesn’t want your recipes.

Next up in our series: why holiday-themed pitches are rarely a good idea.

1. I was born in Munich, Germany. Except when I was born, it was still called West Germany.
2. I love Christmas music. I’ve mentioned this on blogs before, but never here. For the latest, read my Christmas post on Snapshot Chronicles.
3. I’m a pretty good cook, even without a recipe to hand. I love to bake, and spent the last week making five different kinds of holiday cookies.
4. I spent my junior year in high school in Rennes France and a semester in college in Paris. My French is no longer fluent but I still occasionally dream in French and can get by pretty well in French-speaking countries.
5. I’d like to visit Australia some day.
6. If I had to live somewhere else in the world besides New England, it would be a toss-up between Brittany, in the West of France, and Scotland. Clearly,  I am not a sun-worshipper.
7. My husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary two weeks ago.

I’m supposed to tag seven other people, but I’ve got a better idea. Instead of me tagging you, please tag yourself. If you are reading this post, haven’t been tagged yet and would like to play, please consider yourself tagged. Leave a comment below so other readers know that you’ve tagged yourself.

And thank you!!!

Next week, I’m planning a special holiday edition of Good Pitch/Bad Pitch. There will be awards, fun, frolic, merriment and possibly munchkins and flying monkeys. We’ll see…

But I need more good and bad holiday themed pitches. Especially good ones. If you got something kicking around in your inbox, I would be so grateful if you’d send it along.

PS — any holiday, not just the imminent ones!