Discovered: the Bad Pitch Blog (you can send them in, too)
The Bad Pitch Blog
Oh Dear Lord I so wish I had thought of this. I wonder if they take contributions? Seems like they do. And who’s behind it?
I’m Kevin Dugan, author of the award-winning Strategic Public Relations blog. As an accredited public relations professional with nearly 15 years experience, I’m tired of remaining silent. But I knew I would need some help and Richard Laermer was kind enough to join me. Laermer is the author of Full Frontal PR, CEO of RLM Public Relations and has more than 20 years experience on both sides of the media. As a recognized authority on media culture and business trends, his involvement will provide a higher level of expertise and insight into this problem.
Wow, PR people being vicious about other PR people. I’ll hold their coats.
Although I think the criticism of PR people who work in the book publishing industry is a little hard, to be honest. The thing is, books are inflexible beasts: they’re written, and the author (and the publisher) want to talk about that. That is their product; take it or leave it. (Obviously, they’d rather you take it.) But it’s harder to tailor a pitch about a book than a pitch about a company that does various things. (I know this becaue my wife’s a novelist, and getting the publicity to happen in the right way can be damn difficult.)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- And just while we're on the topic of pitching things.. (19 June 2007; score: 36.05%)
- Two data points on the iPod's continuing popularity in the UK (19 October 2004; score: 35.6%)
- Wizzo.. I am a commentisfreer (26 February 2007; score: 35.58%)
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August 13th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
[A comment that got eaten by my spam filters while I was away: author: Siobhan Chapman]
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I left my country and my profession almost 2 years ago, and I still receive PR pitch emails, more often from people I’ve never met, about technology stories that are irrelevant to me. The broadly spread press release is the scatter-gun approach to PR and it must pay off - even if only once in a hundred - for PR firms to still use it.
My old editor had a tier-system with PR firm based on a 3-strike period. If they contacted her on deadline day once and were warned and then did so again the following deadline day, that was an immediate red-card. If they contacted her via email and had her name or the trade title name incorrect, that was immediate deletion. If they pitched her good and exclusive issues-based stories that were relevant to the publication’s readership, they got brownie points. If they followed up any resulting coverage with a whingey “why didn’t our client get more column inches?”, they were immediately brought down to the bottom again.
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