In keeping with the “versus” theme this week, I’ve decided to take a quick look at the challenges faced by technology PR folk when deciding which method of communication to employ when following up with the media on that all important news release. Do you try endlessly for that (ahem) wonderful moment of personal contact when you actually get to speak to your target editor, or do you opt for the less touchy feely but more efficient email?
Of course, if we were talking about general story pitching, then email would win hands down, but the breaking news story is a bit different and often requires a swift response before the story goes cold.
When I put it like that, the phone seems naturally the best option, allowing you to catch the editor or reporter for a moment and help them to understand the real news value behind the email header they were so quick to skip over this morning. Indeed, if you are a skilled technology PR practitioner, you should have no problem handling such a call. But beware those who choose to call a reporter to simply read aloud the opening lines of the news release – not a good idea.
But, despite the fact that a phone call can be an effective contact method, it is becoming more and more difficult to raise busy news editors in this way. It’s understandable – there is a huge amount of technology news breaking every day, and those responsible for identifying and covering the key stories are very often swamped in a deluge of PR. This can sometimes lead to a simple reaction: ignore the phone.
In this case, you might try all day and never reach your desired contact. Increasingly, I am finding that a carefully worded (and brief) follow-up email to key targets can often be a very effective way to generate a quick response. This allows the harassed individual in the newsroom to read your email in a rare moment of downtime and, if you have chosen the right words, it will hopefully strike a chord and result in that ultimate reaction we all seek: interest.
At the end of the day, as you generate relationships with specific media contacts, you’ll get to know what kinds of communications methods work, and which don’t. Both phone and email are great tools in the hands of people who use them effectively.
It is with no small amount of trepidation that I leap into the latest eruption of a long-standing conflict that, invisible to most, has waged between journalists and PR practitioners ever since ink first spilled on paper. But when the New York Times itself is driven to comment on how things have turned ugly in this war, you know this has gone from bitch session to serious business.
The latest round was sparked by a blog post by Wired magazine executive editor Chris Anderson complaining about the hundreds of emails he receives every day from PR folk pitching him stories in which he has absolutely no interest. Anderson kicked the volume up to personal insult level when he went on to list more than 300 individual email addresses of practitioners he accused of being guilty of this practice, swearing that his magazine would block those addresses for all time. Some of the world’s largest agencies were on his list, as were many of our more direct competitors. We were relieved, but not unexpectedly so, to find that we were wholly absent.
The blogosphere raged with swift, loud, passionatereaction. Although there were clear exceptions, the PR industry tended to react defensively while the media industry cheered Anderson for outing these bad apples.
inmedia is unequivocally with Anderson, the majority of reporters and a distressingly small number of our fellow practitioners on this one. Sending a pitch to a reporter who does not write about your client’s stuff and so has no interest in what you’re pitching is bad for the client, bad for the PR industry, a waste of time and resources, and, most of all, betrays a profound ignorance of how the media function and how the PR industry interacts with that function to create value on both sides of the divide.
My colleague, Linda Forrest, weighed in on Friday with the unhappy implications this all-too-common practice has for the PR industry. Let me offer my view on why it’s so common. As a reporter for 10 years and a PR practitioner for another 20, I’ve been on both the transmit and receive ends of too many pitches not to understand why the good ones work so well and why there are so many bad ones out there.
Like many other things, PR is perceived to be a numbers game; throw enough darts and some of them are bound to hit the board. And with too many PR practitioners and their clients unable to measure the value of the function except in terms of the level of effort expended, then more must be better, right? Add in the ease with which today’s technology puts massive lists of journalists at the disposal of practitioners, lists that can be converted into seemingly personalised email blasts with just a few key strokes, plus the tendency, at least on the agency side of the business, to drill the labour-intensive task of actually pitching the media down to the most junior resources, and you have a sure-fire recipe for what Anderson and every other reporter who’s ever been asked about it hates most about the PR profession — bad pitches.
Maybe we’re just fortunate in that most of our clients can’t afford very many darts, so we’re obliged to make the most of every single one we throw, putting a huge amount of effort into ensuring it is aimed as accurately as possible at the highest-scoring part of the right board. But I think it has more to do with our conviction that every story has a natural news value, and that the proper telling of the story to the proper set of media targets will allow us to capture its full value for our clients.
I said at the outset of this post that it was with trepidation that I ventured into these roiling and disturbed waters and my reason for saying so is that I know we can’t afford to be smug about our own record. My colleague Danny Sullivan relayed just Friday morning the very positive reaction he received from a reporter he was pitching that day, a woman who said he had restored her confidence in PR. This is a not uncommon reaction for us. At the same time, Linda reminded me of the wire service reporter who rages at her every time she follows up on an email pitch.
Bottom line: There are many good PR practitioners and many bad ones. Same’s true of reporters. The so-called “war” between the two professions is waged exclusively between the bad operators on one or both sides. And clients, who want more, are not blameless is this, either.
There has been a trend emerging with online content in the past months: sites that had previously allowed only paid subscribers to access full content have opened access to everyone. The latest site to do so is the Wall Street Journal. It’s exciting as technology marketers to see the content that results from our efforts available to the general public, increasing the reach and value of media coverage on these sites. Increasingly users are using search engines to find solution providers and hitting roadblocks when they landed at subscription sites. Now, the promotional value of editorial pieces will bear fruit as more than just the first paragraph is viewable. On the downside, as a consumer, it’s going to mean watching more advertisements as the revenue model changes from subscription-based to advertising-based. Still, the increased visibility for the companies featured in the content is a good thing from this marketer’s perspective.
PR gets a bad rap. Why? Because of bad pitches, misdirected or poorly written announcements being spammed en masse to writers and editors, hyperbolic claims of world-altering developments by companies that lack self-awareness or an understanding of what the media really needs. Experiences like these have soured some decision makers’ thoughts on media relations. Those in our industry who don’t take a best-practices approach have earned this reputation for the rest of us and it can be a challenge for us to have to communicate that we’re different.
That said, we are constantly surprised that our approach is seen as novel, when we feel it is the only effective way to engage with the media based on a process that has been honed over time: An objectives-based program that targets specific results and relies on expert knowledge of what the media need from us in order to derive mutual value from our engagement with them.
We feel that a best practices approach is one that presents information to the media in a definitive, easily understood way that doesn’t include spin or hyperbole. The consistent and sustained effort against the proper targets will deliver the full news value the story deserves. Period. There is no magic bullet, it’s not all about the relationships (Francis will surely address this fiction in a post in the days ahead); it’s just working smart and working hard that gets the results that our clients are looking for.
It’s disheartening to see companies suffering from their PR mistakes or to see the media’s collective eye-roll at the latest outlandish news release that crosses their path. When companies see little or no results from their media relations “programs” – that often consist of nothing more than sending out news releases and not taking an integrated approach – it creates an unfair portrait of the potential of media relations to move their market.
Media relations is not the right tactic for all companies; other marketing activities like advertising or direct mail might make more sense based on your companies’ customers and their buying habits. But it’s such a shame that so many companies are soured on PR because of bad experiences, poor guidance.
