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Thursday, August 21, 2008
“Pitch me!” says blogger; “Sorry,” say PR reps
While an army of bloggers have been complaining about PR pitches, Ewan MacLeod has the opposite problem. MacLeod, who writes SMS Text News and blogs at Mobile Industry Review, likes getting pitched. He even reaches out to PR people representing mobile companies in search of news. Amazingly, he’s more likely than not to be told they don’t have anything for him.
MacLeod is offering to share the agencies on his “er, no news” list with companies. After all, the work of public relations goes well beyond blasting out press releases. As MacLeod puts it, “You shouldn’t be paying them if they can’t broadcast and react.”
What do you mean you’ve got ‘no news’? NOTHING has happened with your clients? Nothing… at all? What you mean is that you haven’t got a press release to issue. But you’ve most certainly got news. Surely? If you don’t, what the hell are you doing in the PR industry? But, well, it seems a large chunk of the PR industry is stuck in broadcast mode. Happy to talk to you if they’re flogging a press release, but highly, highly unable to react to a request for a shout-out.
MacLeod’s estimate of the number of practitioners telling him they’ve got nothing for him? An amazing, depressing 80%.
It’s frankly a stunning notion that professionals in this business can’t manage to find something to say about a client when the media or a blogger comes knocking. As I noted in my commentary about MacLeod’s post in today’s FIR, I remember the Symantec media site years ago, when Craig Settles was working on it. You could always find a list of story ideas for journalists noodling about looking for something to write about. If someone called me about one of my clients, I’d be able to rattle off three or four things they could cover; I’d also offer interviews or sound bites from somebody with the company.
Is this something you’ve encountered? If you’ve told someone you have nothing to share about a client, could you explain what on earth would possess you to do so? We’re not talking about a response to a specific issue here, just a simple, “Anything I can report about your client today?”
What agency would tolerate such a response?
