PR

Changing up the promised order a bit because I want to do justice to the Jim Beam social media pitch and haven’t had the time to really dig into the program itself the way I’d like before commenting. So today I’m going to share some ways good pitches go bad, and what you can do to fix it.

The first comes via Twitter pal and environmental blogger Chris Baskind who tweeted the other day about a bad pitch. Never shy, I asked if he would share. Here’s the scoop.

Chris got a product pitch that interested him for EcoTech Daily, but there was no link to pictures. Strike one: if you are pitching a product to someone who covers products, it’s a good idea to include a link to some pictures. No images made an otherwise interesting pitch a failure for Chris.

Why do PR people do this? Often it is because they want to control access to images and additional resources. Know who is getting what. Old school, my friends, do not do it.

Chris asked the PR rep for images, and got… two shots that looked like they’d been taken with a cameraphone. Strike two: poor quality artwork.

Eventually, he did get some decent images and wrote the story. But this PR person was lucky. Chris gave him more than one chance. Not everyone will .

How did this good pitch almost fail? By not giving the writer the information he needed in the form he needed. First no pictures, then bad pictures. How do you avoid it? Find out what the blogger wants. EcoTech Daily covers "green technology, gadgets and news." Product pitches without good pictures are pretty useless.

Word of caution: Do not attach the pictures to your email pitch. Include a link. If a blogger needs you to send them in email, he’ll ask.

The second is the meandering pitch that wanders around, here there and everywhere, but never quite seems to get to the point. For example, this one.

This is well-intentioned, and gets good marks for its opening paragraph. And then it falls apart. Instead of telling the blogger quickly and succinctly how they might work together and  the benefit to the blogger, the email goes into the message points for the web series. Then it sort of wanders around how the blogger might work with the show but there’s nothing specific.

Too long, no specifics, no benefits. 

9×1 does not equal 3×3. It’s a well understood communications concept. In any given conversation, sharing nine different ideas one time each will never have the same impact that repeating three core ideas three times each has. Modern PR practice is pretty much based on this idea; develop three messages and repeat repeat repeat. These messages are about the company, its products and sometimes why the customer needs/wants it. But they are rarely about the customer.

And that’s why so many blog pitches fail. Because they are based on the standard messages about the products and how the blogger can promote them. Not the blogger and how the products can help her. 

What’s the fix?

Do your blogger relations math. Write your pitch. Count the number of times you mention your company, product and what you’d like the blogger to do for you. Then count the number of times you mention the customer and what she gets from the deal. First time through, you’ll probably have far more mentions of YOU than of HER. That’s what you fix. Go back through it, and make sure you’ve got at least as much about your customer as you do about your products, and please, do not fool yourself that the privilege of buying your products is about the customer. It’s still about you.

The pitch above could have been done in two paragraphs:

1. Introduction, one sentence about the show and a specific offer about a way the blogger could engage with the show with clear benefit to the blogger
2. Indication that the show was open to other ideas from bloggers and close

Finally, for another perspective on what makes a good pitch, check out this post from Chris Brogan. Make sure you read the comments. Quite a variety of opinions.

Tags: blogger relations, public relations

Well, I hope you are enjoying my good pitch, bad pitch analyses because I’m sure having fun doing them. Today, for giggles, we are going to look at a few bad pitches. Then tomorrow I am going to tell you about a campaign from Jim Beam that I was pitched last week… as an example of a good pitch 🙂 Later this week, we’ll discuss one simple way to turn a good pitch into a bad pitch. Note: this is not a recommended strategy.

The pitch to me for the Jim Beam campaign gets points for cleverness. Jason Falls pitched me a social media marketing campaign in response to my posts and tweets about social media marketing campaigns. But when I asked the him for more detail on how he pitched his client’s program to other bloggers, Jason ponied up. And sent me some of his pitches. So extra points for guts, dude, because you know I often use screen grabs. Then again, fits with the brand, and that works for me too. More tomorrow.  [Jason — if you are counting, as I know you are, that means you get two hits from me. For whatever that’s worth.]

Today, however, we shall laugh at some stupid crap from PR agencies.

Our first victim — a pitch for a video contest for an ice cream bar. Totally unmemorable, says the blogger who forwarded this to me, until she got to the part directing her to post it on her site.

That did not go over so well. And why the pitch made it to MY inbox 🙂 Good blogger relations practice: Never ask a blogger to write. If the pitch is good, you don’t need to ask.

And then of course, there was the end of the email:

I black-box company names but the "X" — that was all them, my friends. Talk about a cut-and-paste pitch. This rep didn’t bother to sign her own name before she launched the email blast.  I can’t repeat this enough — of preference, do not use email blast programs to pitch bloggers. Send individual emails. With some standard explanatory verbiage for sure, but hand done, each one. But if you are going to use an email blast, at least make sure your technology doesn’t suck. Signed X. Jeez..

Next, one of my all time favorites, false familiarity. Even worse when combined with poor proofreading.

Hey, buddy. I don’t know you. "Hey" is a dicey form of address when it comes from someone you DO know. Totally inappropriate to someone  you do NOT know. Try "Hi" instead. And then there are all the grammar errors. Needless to say, this one goes straight to the round file.

The lesson: proofread. More than once. Be appropriate in how you address the blogger. Hi followed immediately by who you are and why you are writing has always worked well for me: Hi Susan, My name is Susan Getgood and I am working with company X to introduce bloggers to XYZ.

And finally, another example of why is important to tailor the pitch to the blogger AND have something of real value to impart. A contest or drawing usually isn’t enough, unless it offers real recognition based on skill to the blogger. Or a kick ass prize. And even then… those are a dime a dozen these days. How do you distinguish your offer or contest? 

Here’s the pitch. What makes it bad?

It’s all about the product, the service, the offer. How the blogger can help this company promote their contest and their site. For free. Not about her at all. Just a pitch for some free coverage.

The sad thing is that this product might resonate if the pitch had been better targeted and better written.

Am I being tough? Absolutely. Because these are wasted opportunities. If I was allowed to give one piece, and only one piece, of advice to companies considering blogger outreach it would be this: Lead with the customer, ie the blogger. Relate to a real problem or concern and then introduce your product or service.

We don’t care about products. We care about how they help us, meet our needs, make us happy. Start there. We’ll fill in the rest.

Tags: blogger relations, PR, bad pitch

The real PR outreach problem we should be solving:

 

This email was sent to multiple parent bloggers today. All of whose names were not available.

This problem doesn’t get solved by talking about how to punish the transgressors. It gets solved by making the investments in training, technology and research that avoid mass blast emails sent to "Name Not Available." Pony up, PR agencies.

 It gets solved when clients start having realistic expectations of media and blogger outreach, and realize that the customer should be the focus, not them. Let your agency lead with something compelling and relevant for the customer. If the agency doesn’t suggest a more personal, more customer centric approach, get a new PR agency.

Count ’em: six references in the first graph to the specific brand/company (the black boxes) , three to the category, photo gifts, and only  two, if you stretch it, to the customer. We can’t in good conscience count Name Not Available as a reference to the customer.

We have got to start treating our customers right. Or suffer the consequences. Because as we’ve seen this week, there will be consequences.

Tags: blogger relations, bad pitch, pr, public relations

In Stowe Boyd’s responses to the latest black list flap, he advocates a totally transparent model for what he terms microPR:

"So, this is an additional argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model. In the open, that can’t lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God."

There is some merit to bringing the entire conversation out into the light, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. There are too many impediments, including, but not limited to, the inevitable control issues. Companies and their PR agencies still think that they can maintain control over the process by managing it in a certain fashion. Wishful thinking.

So while I don’t think every communication between company and blogger has to happen in public, I believe we ought to act, write and speak as though they were. We used say:  would you do it, say it if your actions would appear on the front page of the NY Times tomorrow? Well, now, they could spread even wider. Act accordingly. Expect that your pitch will be published in full on a blog. Or used as an example.

More important than where you have the conversation is what you talk about. We have to stop being product centric and start being customer centric. For real, not just lip service.

The blogger isn’t simply an intermediary. He or she is your customer. Instead of asking the question:  how can we get the blogger to write about our laundry soap or tech widget? companies, and their agencies, should be asking, How can I help my customer? What information from us would be truly valuable and useful in their daily lives? What can we do for them? I guarantee you, it isn’t that your juice has 25% less sugar than yesterday or you are now at version 2.4.5.x of your software.

Companies should be talking to their customers where they are. If they are on Twitter, and they, like Stowe Boyd, want to be Twit-pitched, great. But if not — if the place is Facebook or MySpace or some other community, that’s where the company employees and PR reps should hang out. Get to know the people, their interests. Let the people get to know them. And then make the customers, not the company, not the product, the center of the story. However you pitch it, public or one-to-one.

"But that’s so hard and takes so long," says traditional PR flack.

Hhmm. Yes. But isn’t talking with your customer worth a little time?

Tags: blogger relations, public relations, pr blacklist, Stowe Boyd

This week, the idea of a black list to stop PR agencies from spamming bloggers and journalists reared its not terribly attractive head, this time from Gina Trapani of Lifehacker who published a list of domains that had sent unsolicited email to her personal email address.  In the not distant past, we had the same invocation from Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired.

They have a point, and I don’t dismiss the concern at all. More and more, PR pitches are poorly targeted, poorly written spam. Bad when sent to journalists. Inexcusable sent to bloggers.

But black lists don’t work. Not really. They didn’t work for Joseph McCarthy in the 50s and they aren’t going to stop bad blog pitching now.

Why? Because they trap the innocent, the naive, the well-intentioned as much as they trap the disingenuous, the guilty, the spammers. And since the truly guilty are playing a numbers game, a block here or there matters little to them.

Our collective attitude about PR is no different than our attitude toward advertising. It’s not that we don’t like ads. What we don’t like is bad advertising, poor direct mail and fundraising calls during dinner.

For the most part, we don’t want to block ALL email from PR and marketing agencies. Just that which is untargeted, irrelevant, impersonal.

So companies, and their agencies, need to get with the program and figure out how to reach out to their customers online in positive ways. Reactive and proactive.

How? It starts with understanding what interests your customer. Perhaps your product, but generally, campaigns built around products fall flat. You need to think beyond YOUR product and into your customer’s interests. Needs. Desires. Hopes. Aspirations.

That’s not so easy for your average cereal or soap marketer. And why so many campaigns end up in the bad pitch column. Even when they aren’t necessarily that bad.

And unfortunately, there is no magic formula. Anyone who tells you there is? Liar.

It’s a process. It starts with preparation, research and active participation with the bloggers that matter to you. And for whom you matter.

Then when you go to engage — to pitch — it means developing a program that is as much, or more, about them than it is about you.  A press release about your latest announcement does not qualify. Sorry.

Watch this space over the next few months for some examples of companies that seem to understand what this means and have done outreach programs that resonated with bloggers.

And, please, stop looking for the bogeyman. There isn’t one — not even at the stupidest, spammiest PR Agency . Focusing our energies on looking for one obscures the real issue.

How do we want to engage with our customers online?

Want some help? I don’t often promote my consulting business here on the Roadmap. I figure if you want to call, you will. But please don’t forget that helping companies meet their customers online is my business. If I can be of service to you, nothing would make me happier.

Especially if it reduced the number of bad pitches landing in our inboxes.

Tags: blogger relations, black list, pr, public relations