If you haven’t yet read “The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott, you should. One of his chapter-headings is “Non-Targeted, Broadcast Pitches are Spam.”
A pretty wide definition. But I couldn’t agree more. Very few things about this industry make me as mad as these so-called “pitches.” They show absolutely no respect for the writers/editors at which they’re aimed. Think about it: In how many other industries can you expect to “make the sale” after blatantly disrespecting the person to whom you’re selling? This practice is the biggest reason why so many journalists don’t respect us (to put it mildly!).
I started out as a journalist. I grew up in a newsroom. I was a newspaper reporter. And then a magazine editor. And I can’t even begin to estimate the thousands of releases I’ve tossed or deleted because I could see instantly that they had been sent to a thousand other journalists, as well. I could see without even opening them that they were not targeted specifically to my demographics or my beat or my magazines. They were just tossed blindly against as many walls as the tosser could think of, in the hope that maybe a few of them might – just possibly – stick.
I can tell you, though, that, with most journalists who receive these blind pitches, the only thing that sticks is a lifelong distain for public relations people.
I'm forever trying to educate clients that their "great" story is great only if it offers the readers (who are, after all, the end-users) actionable advice that can help make their lives or their businesses better. If there's not a real "news" value to what I'm asked to pitch...I won't pitch it. It's cost me a client here or there - but it's damned worth it.
More than ever, coverage in the appropriate niche is worth much more than coverage in scattered media that are of no value to your clients' businesses. Ideally, clients would be more open to understanding this. But it's not their fault.
The real fault, actually, lies with the agencies and the corporate PR practitioners who have a golden opportunity to educate their clients (or senior management), and don't do it. As long as PR people are willing to practice this approach, some clients will think it's best.
I'm still waiting for the day when the quantity of pitches matters less than the quality of the resulting media coverage.
In other words...when output matters less than results.
Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com
Showing posts with label media coverage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media coverage. Show all posts
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
I'M MAD AS HELL!
I’m mad as hell…and I’m not going to take it anymore!
If you can remember who said those words, you’re not a kid anymore. (It was Peter Finch, in the classic seventies movie, “Network.”) As I recall, Finch’s character was fed up with humanity, fed up with network news, fed up with plastic people (and “entertainment” news approaches), etc., etc. So – if I recall correctly – he went over to a window in the high-rise where his station was headquartered, and bellowed out that famous cry at the top of his lungs.
It’s thirty years later. But I have to admit that sometimes I’m so fed up with some of the practices in my own profession that I feel like doing the same thing Peter Finch did. (Except that today, we’re assaulted by such a constant cacophony of noise that probably no one would hear me yelling.)
I, obviously, meet a lot of PR people, from new graduates to old veterans. The new graduates can be forgiven their ignorance about what constitutes effective PR; they’ve never had the chance to see for themselves. But I have a hard-time dealing with veteran PR people who still cling to the old, outdated ways…basically, old-time release-mongers. And, unfortunately, these dinosaurs are often the ones lecturing the new graduates on the “real world.”
I have a lot of Public Relations “Principles” (too many, say some of the people whom I constantly bombard with them!) And, even though the technology, the marketing environment, etc, have changed, these ten constants, I believe, haven’t:
1) Target your pitches! No shotgun approaches!
2) If you want to piss off a journalist (who, these days, is probably doing the job of three people), send him a proposal totally unrelated to his beat.
3) LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE!
4) Next step: Learn how to write effective business communications...which is a lot different than just learning how to write.
5) Learn the concept of a pitch (strategy, tactic, campaign, etc.) that benefits the person to whom you're pitching as well as your client (internal or external).
6) Effective public "relations" is all about establishing relationships. And nurturing them.
7) Read...everything!
8) Become a resource for the media...not only a pitchman.
9) Realize that your client's (or company's) story may seem "great" to them...but that it might not seem that way to the media. And - this is a huge challenge, I know - try to get them to understand that.
10) Try to get your client (or company) to understand that effective public relations takes a long-term approach, not a short-term, shotgun, toss-mud-against-the-wall-and-see-how-much-of-it-sticks approach.
I could go on and on...but (no cheers, folks!) I'll stop here. But I'll add one thing...and this last “constant” is liable to piss off some of the old-school folks: TELL THE TRUTH!!! One story that results from telling the truth is better than ten that result from a lie. Because, sooner or later, the lie will catch up with the company or the client on whose behalf you’re telling the story. And then it will catch up to you.
And, when that happens, it’s the equivalent of going to the window and throwing it open. With one difference - professionally, you may as well jump.
Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com
If you can remember who said those words, you’re not a kid anymore. (It was Peter Finch, in the classic seventies movie, “Network.”) As I recall, Finch’s character was fed up with humanity, fed up with network news, fed up with plastic people (and “entertainment” news approaches), etc., etc. So – if I recall correctly – he went over to a window in the high-rise where his station was headquartered, and bellowed out that famous cry at the top of his lungs.
It’s thirty years later. But I have to admit that sometimes I’m so fed up with some of the practices in my own profession that I feel like doing the same thing Peter Finch did. (Except that today, we’re assaulted by such a constant cacophony of noise that probably no one would hear me yelling.)
I, obviously, meet a lot of PR people, from new graduates to old veterans. The new graduates can be forgiven their ignorance about what constitutes effective PR; they’ve never had the chance to see for themselves. But I have a hard-time dealing with veteran PR people who still cling to the old, outdated ways…basically, old-time release-mongers. And, unfortunately, these dinosaurs are often the ones lecturing the new graduates on the “real world.”
I have a lot of Public Relations “Principles” (too many, say some of the people whom I constantly bombard with them!) And, even though the technology, the marketing environment, etc, have changed, these ten constants, I believe, haven’t:
1) Target your pitches! No shotgun approaches!
2) If you want to piss off a journalist (who, these days, is probably doing the job of three people), send him a proposal totally unrelated to his beat.
3) LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE! LEARN HOW TO WRITE!
4) Next step: Learn how to write effective business communications...which is a lot different than just learning how to write.
5) Learn the concept of a pitch (strategy, tactic, campaign, etc.) that benefits the person to whom you're pitching as well as your client (internal or external).
6) Effective public "relations" is all about establishing relationships. And nurturing them.
7) Read...everything!
8) Become a resource for the media...not only a pitchman.
9) Realize that your client's (or company's) story may seem "great" to them...but that it might not seem that way to the media. And - this is a huge challenge, I know - try to get them to understand that.
10) Try to get your client (or company) to understand that effective public relations takes a long-term approach, not a short-term, shotgun, toss-mud-against-the-wall-and-see-how-much-of-it-sticks approach.
I could go on and on...but (no cheers, folks!) I'll stop here. But I'll add one thing...and this last “constant” is liable to piss off some of the old-school folks: TELL THE TRUTH!!! One story that results from telling the truth is better than ten that result from a lie. Because, sooner or later, the lie will catch up with the company or the client on whose behalf you’re telling the story. And then it will catch up to you.
And, when that happens, it’s the equivalent of going to the window and throwing it open. With one difference - professionally, you may as well jump.
Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
RIDING SHOTGUN
RIDING SHOTGUN
In the Old West, if you were a passenger on a stagecoach, your chances of reaching your destination alive (or, at least, still in possession of your money) often depended on the rifleman sitting up front next to the driver – the man “riding shotgun.”
In the New Millenium, however, if you’re a public relations practitioner, you should know that the shotgun-approach so prevalent in our industry today is one of the primary reasons that “PR” has such a tarnished reputation.
Just throwing mud - boring, inappropriate, or lacking-news-value pitches - at the media, and hoping some of it sticks, is not a prescription for effective communication. Actually, it hasn’t been considered an effective means of public relations for some time – by evolved practitioners, anyway. And that's especially true these days, when each of us devotes only 3-5 seconds to deciding whether we’re going to continue to read or watch what we’ve started reading or watching.
I'm forever trying to educate clients that their "great" story is great only if it offers the readers or viewers (not the media itself…but the readers or viewers of the media!) actionable advice that can help make their personal or professional lives better. If there's not a real "news" value to what I'm asked to pitch...I won't pitch it. It's cost me a client here or there. But it's damned worth it.
We live (and work) in an era of fly-by attention spans, when we are bombarded with thousands of messages in a day. We are bombarded with so many messages, in fact, that most of us couldn’t name messages we heard or saw less than a minute ago. And - in the name of preserving our sanity - we end up tuning out most of these messages.
Doesn’t it occur to us that the people we’re trying to reach with our own messages are the same way? Doesn’t it occur to us that if we hit them anywhere but where it really counts – in their hearts – we’re wasting our time?
More than ever, coverage in the appropriate niche is worth much more than coverage in scattered media that are of no genuine value to your clients' businesses. You'd think clients, of all people, would be more open to understanding this. But it's not their fault.
The real fault lies with the agencies and the corporate PR practitioners who have a golden opportunity to educate their clients (or in-house clients), and don't do it. And as long as PR people practice the shotgun approach – generally in the hopes of achieving short-term “results” - clients will continue to think it's best.
I'm a twenty-year veteran in this business. And I'm still waiting for the day when the volume and width of media “pitches” matters less than the quality of the resulting media coverage...when the number of “hits’ matters less than the number of relevant hits.
What I’m waiting for, essentially, is the day when output matters less than results.
And when the “shotgun” approach is seen only on old westerns...and not in new public relations campaigns.
Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com
In the Old West, if you were a passenger on a stagecoach, your chances of reaching your destination alive (or, at least, still in possession of your money) often depended on the rifleman sitting up front next to the driver – the man “riding shotgun.”
In the New Millenium, however, if you’re a public relations practitioner, you should know that the shotgun-approach so prevalent in our industry today is one of the primary reasons that “PR” has such a tarnished reputation.
Just throwing mud - boring, inappropriate, or lacking-news-value pitches - at the media, and hoping some of it sticks, is not a prescription for effective communication. Actually, it hasn’t been considered an effective means of public relations for some time – by evolved practitioners, anyway. And that's especially true these days, when each of us devotes only 3-5 seconds to deciding whether we’re going to continue to read or watch what we’ve started reading or watching.
I'm forever trying to educate clients that their "great" story is great only if it offers the readers or viewers (not the media itself…but the readers or viewers of the media!) actionable advice that can help make their personal or professional lives better. If there's not a real "news" value to what I'm asked to pitch...I won't pitch it. It's cost me a client here or there. But it's damned worth it.
We live (and work) in an era of fly-by attention spans, when we are bombarded with thousands of messages in a day. We are bombarded with so many messages, in fact, that most of us couldn’t name messages we heard or saw less than a minute ago. And - in the name of preserving our sanity - we end up tuning out most of these messages.
Doesn’t it occur to us that the people we’re trying to reach with our own messages are the same way? Doesn’t it occur to us that if we hit them anywhere but where it really counts – in their hearts – we’re wasting our time?
More than ever, coverage in the appropriate niche is worth much more than coverage in scattered media that are of no genuine value to your clients' businesses. You'd think clients, of all people, would be more open to understanding this. But it's not their fault.
The real fault lies with the agencies and the corporate PR practitioners who have a golden opportunity to educate their clients (or in-house clients), and don't do it. And as long as PR people practice the shotgun approach – generally in the hopes of achieving short-term “results” - clients will continue to think it's best.
I'm a twenty-year veteran in this business. And I'm still waiting for the day when the volume and width of media “pitches” matters less than the quality of the resulting media coverage...when the number of “hits’ matters less than the number of relevant hits.
What I’m waiting for, essentially, is the day when output matters less than results.
And when the “shotgun” approach is seen only on old westerns...and not in new public relations campaigns.
Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com
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