How do you do it with a straight face?
Well, today I got my first pitch as a blogger. It would have been a proud moment, if the pitch weren’t so odd…and, well, bad.
Here’s the thing, as a PR practitioner, I’ve never wanted to be one of “those people.” You know the type, one that could care less if they a) tick the editor off because they wasted their time or got their name wrong or b) has been corrected by them. Both would be so embarrassing—the latter, unbearable.
There are so many blogs posts on how to pitch editors, journalists, reporters and now bloggers that I won’t bore you with a “how to pitch” post.
Here’s the pitch. Read it through, chuckle, and let me know what you think.
Subject: Sneak Peek: New Calendar Marketing Concept from [Company Name Here]
Hi Beth Harte [Yes, that's my name, stick it in a form e-mail without punctuation. That's fine; I know you're lazy.]
I am sending you advance notice of [fluffy marketing terms here, also known as gobbledygook] an entirely new marketing medium that will be released later this week.
[Company name with more gobbledygook] is a permission-based marketing medium for businesses to promote time-sensitive products and services. It has similarities with email marketing services, but the delivery is to electronic calendars. [You mean it's not e-mail going to a paper calendar? Phew! Glad you clarified that for me.]
The platform delivers marketing offers as embedded calendar events into electronic calendars [you don't say, still electronic, huh?]. As these time-based offers are placed in a medium [um, would that be the calendar?] where the customer makes their scheduling decisions every day [yes, isn't that what a calendar is for?!], the marketing offer is timely, relevant, and acted upon [uh, huh, and can you guarantee that?]. For example, a retailer sends a notice of a weekend sale with a coupon or a travel supplier creates live calendar feeds with last minute travel deals… [Who reacts last minute to a travel deal? Wouldn't they be on their way out the door? Just saying...]
Marketers now have a new method to engage their customers while building loyalty and driving sales. [New marketing buzz word here. BTW, hope you have a large budget.] is a great complement for marketers engaged in email campaigns to an existing subscriber list or loyalty customers. [Is that your way of saying ‘It's okay, really, this isn't a spam machine'?]
We have posted a 3-minute screencast on our website at the following location. You can check it out via the link below. [Okay, got it the first time.]
When we launch later this week, we will invite you back [say what?!] to try it out for yourself. We are interested in your thoughts and look forward to your feedback.
Warm Regards,
Name
[blog]
Let me get this straight…you will invite me back later AFTER the launch?! Where’s my “sneak peek???” Is it at the same location as the other 100,000 people you spammed? Gee, thanks.
Here’s some advice, both marketing and PR (no light bulb moments here folks):
- Send a personalized note.
- Don’t use gobbledygook.
- Perfect your writing.
- Don’t tease; it’s just rude and a waste of time.
- Don’t assume because you have a blog I will feel a camaraderie.
- If you are pitching a sneak preview, make it exclusive.
- If you honestly want my feedback, invite me to an exclusive beta (and not 4 days before the launch).
I am sure there are more tips, but I think you get the point. And, I am still just too scorned over the bait & switch (uh, not really) to add an solid advice here. It just seems such a basic what not to do. What’s your take?
[Photo: iStock]
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Tags: bad PR, Marketing, pitching, product marketing, Public Relations
10 Responses to “How do you do it with a straight face?”
The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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My take is the Peter Lynch method of stock picking: if a 7-year-old can’t describe the business (or its product) in language her peers can understand, the business won’t succeed.
One only needs to look at the types of firms engaged in M&A and stock splits to ascertain Lynch is still right.
Your firm above, Beth, is describing a product that is not understandable by a grade-school student. And that’s why the pitch fails because they’re trying to hard to sell themselves.
Good advice, Beth. It seems so simple, but yet many don’t abide by the rules of good communication when trying to interest someone in their brands or products/services. I’m not fond of the gobbledygook and I definitely agree that the writing must be very good too (at least to catch my attention). Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
yeah, those pretty much end up in my trash folder. I agree with you on personalization. A note written by a human being and not a mass-mailing (and you can tell the difference as you’ve pointed out so well here) will get my attention.
Beth, having just graduated with a degree in PR, I read all these posts about how people in our profession don’t have a clue as to how to approach journalist and bloggers alike, what a surprise right? No not really, because we continue to see pitches like this..and I keep asking myself is it really that hard?
I am probably the farthest thing from a PR or social media expert but I do go out of my way to take the time to understand exactly what I’m pitching and who I am pitching to. I have had about 5 internships in PR while I was in college, two of which heavily integrated the use of social media—so I had the opportunity to reach out to bloggers. I think, at the time, the most frustrating part was the sheer time and effort it took to really research the people I was pitching. I had to actually read their stuff and understand what they are passionate about. I was always intimated at first to pitch to bloggers, because of this very reason, that they would rip my pitch apart—then I realized, mine NEVER sounded like this. Completely impersonal and half the time, irrelevant. My logic, if I was pitching a journalist/blogger who wasn’t interested in what I was pitching them, it was a waste of their time which only equates to a waste of mine.
What it comes down to is pure laziness and a little bit of hope (maybe ignorance). I used get to get extremely frustrated when I read pitches like this, but now, I think I smile because I realized it only makes people who actually put in the effort look that much better. Thanks to post like this I learned exactly what NOT to do!
Nicole
Wow…that…pitch…was…ridiculous.
First, there’s so much jargon in there that I don’t even really know what the company does at a glance – and I’m a pretty smart guy, if I may say so.
Second, I stopped reading after the second paragraph. WAY too long a pitch. If you can’t summarize the newsworthiness in a few sentences, then you’re probably stretching.
Three, nice of you not to call out the person by name or the company. Though, they probably would have counted it as a “hit” if you did.
I’ll say at least this much. You’re first time being pitched to as a blogger was memorable. I’d think it’s hard to forget something that bad.
Beth, You know, you have become pretty popular and in the limelight lately, and much, much deserved!
Enjoy the spotlight!
The pitch is scattershot, using a big gun so that it doesn’t have to rely on skill and technique to aim at a target with accuracy or finesse. Either the company is A) very young/immature B) out of tune and believes trite hack approach (think smarmy) is trust-inducing or C) has cobbled together quasi-techniques used by others, and done a poor job at executing.
No one has time to waste on “opportunities” that don’t yield value. We now have filters to screen out the chaff for us.
A sad note, though, is that many times the client or leadership squashes the communicator’s advice on such things.
@AriHerzog, Love the analogy. I think sometimes we all tend to get caught up in marketing and company speak. We need to keep the Lynch method in mind, as most people have no clue what we are saying or trying to say.
@Deirdre, I think when we are “inside” it’s so much harder to not shake the goobledygook because everyone speaks it. It’s only when you are on the outside can we easily point out the obvious. As for good writing that is also attention getting, well, that is a craft that takes a lot of practice!
@YatPundit, I am not a robot…don’t treat me like one…does not compute. LOL!
@NicoleHamilton, what you described is so rare in this industry. It’s refreshing to hear your viewpoint and you will do well in your career because you get it. It IS that simple and a bad pitch IS a waste of everybody’s time. My favorite journalist and I had a relationship over literature…that’s right we both loved to read. Eventually the call would end with “oh, yeah, so the release I emailed you…” It’s also about relationships. And they only form when you aren’t wasting everyone’s time.
@DavidMullen, I would never call out a company (unless it was something they were doing very public). As a result of my post, another company sent me a pitch and actually told me they were glad they read my post before pitching me. Too funny, but glad they did.
@EricBrown, why thank you sir! And as a result of your tremendous efforts, I have been telling people to follow you or read your blog because you are a case study in action! Hope you don’t mind.
@HeatherRast, you hit the nail on the head with A and B. I am kind of glad that it didn’t end up in the spam filter because it proves such a valuable point.
@Susan, I totally understand that! I recently was at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer and one of the sessions on E-Mail and Social Media proved insightful…the combination of the two will make this type of blasted e-mail pitching a legacy.
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