This article first appeared on PR Daily in September, 2015.
This article will be the last I write as co-editor of PR Daily. It’s a bittersweet occasion.
On the one hand, I’m leaving behind a group of co-workers, including fellow Co-editor Beki Winchel, Vice President of Editorial Roula Amire, Executive Editor Rob Reinalda and Ragan.com Associate Editor Kristin Piombino, just to name a few, who have been nothing but forthright, accommodating and friendly. I’ll miss working with them every day, though I do plan to stay in touch. (And who knows? My name may even appear on this site again in a freelance capacity.)
Then again, I’ll never again have to receive misdirected pitches from PR reps who apparently don’t read the website, don’t care that we don’t run the type of story they’re pitching, or live their lives at the whims of executives who don’t read the site nor care what we run. That is a relief.
As a guide for people looking to pitch PR Daily in the future, and perhaps to help prevent Beki and my successor from having to deal with such a glut of errant pitches, here are some broad categories of pitches that have irked me most over the past several years:
1. Insular agency announcements. There hasn’t been a single day since I started as co-editor in which I haven’t received at least 10 emails in which agencies are excited to let me know about a new hire, an executive promotion, a merger, a new client, a new office, a brand change, and the list goes on.
I’ve never run one of these stories. Not one. The closest I’ve come is probably when the PRSA made leadership changes. Yet the pitches continue unabated. Sometimes I’m asked to include them in our “briefs” section. We don’t have a “briefs” section.
My suspicion has always been that these are the result of executives leaning over PR pros’ shoulders, demanding that they send these announcements, convinced we’ll run them. We don’t, and I suspect we never will.
That doesn’t mean that no announcement has value, though. Announcing something that could have resonance across the PR industry would absolutely be worth noting in a story. A great example is when a group of agencies came together to announce that they wouldn’t secretly edit Wikipedia pages.
2. Anniversaries and awards. Along the lines of the last category, it’s not that there’s no significance to pitches involving a milestone or being recognized for great work. It’s just that they aren’t really newsworthy on their own. Simply telling me that your agency is celebrating its 30th year or earned the prestigious Best Agency of All Time Award won’t cut it.
How did your agency survive that long? What did it do to earn the recognition? Tell me that—with specifics beyond “commitment to clients” and “thought leadership”—and then I might be interested. Better yet, present your celebration as something instructive, like this guest post from Peppercomm.
3. Studies that have nothing to do with PR or marketing. We run a lot of stories about studies on PR Daily, because (we hope) our readers want to get an idea of the state of affairs in the industries in which they work. It seems that some folks interpret our appreciation for studies as a willingness to run a story about any study or report.
Not so.
Just looking through my folder of deleted emails, I see discarded pitches about studies involving “online video revenue in Europe,” a study about “mature wearables” (whatever that means), a study about hidden retirement fees, something about “insider lending tips” and a surprising number of pieces about how many people watch MTV awards shows.
A few of those may be tangentially related to PR and marketing, but at best their focus is too narrow, and at worst they totally miss the mark.
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4. Advertising stories. Repeat after me: PR Daily is not Ad Age.
Sure, there’s some overlap between what a PR news site and an advertising news outlet would cover—for instance, social media falls into both camps pretty squarely—but a new TV ad campaign? That falls squarely in the advertising camp.
Of course, the second those ads get pulled off the air because they include an offensive caricature or because the spokesman makes some massive public blunder, that’s when PR Daily steps in.
5. Items that focus solely on tech. We cover a lot of new technologies here, too, but there’s an important caveat: They matter to us only with regard to how they’ll help PR professionals and marketers do their jobs. A new gizmo, social media site or app is certainly nice, but if you can’t tell me how it will affect the daily lives of our readers, it doesn’t really mean much.
Just today, I got an email pitch (from a PR firm, no less) listing “holiday gift guide gadget ideas.” They include alarm clocks and toaster ovens. What is PR Daily supposed to do with that?
Maybe the next co-editor can figure it out.
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