Each and every day, the Forces of Flackdom flood reporters, editors, producers and (ahem) influential bloggers with “media pitches” – trade lingo for unsolicited story ideas, event notices and interview offers concocted by PR people in hopes of generating positive publicity for their clients and companies. Many news and trade media get dozens of these emails, faxes and phone calls by lunch time. I know a couple of editors who swear they get hundreds.
Every editor I know complains that most “media pitches” are inbox-clogging, useless junk. The topics or people are irrelevant, the content incoherent. This hasn’t been good for business. A newspaper guy told me once that one reason so many journalists have a cynical view of corporations is because they choose to be represented by blast-emailing flacks who make them look like clueless, publicity-mongering buffoons.
It’s bad enough that bad PR pitching creates a bad image. It can also can create a real crisis. A few years ago I was an expert witness in a shareholder lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company whose stock went through the roof because its PR agency sent out a "media advisory" promising historic news at a press conference to occur several days later. In reality, the company was just issuing a routine update on the status of its drug trials. Amazingly, the PR agency argued it was merely pitching media to drum up interest in the press event, and that nobody intended for the “general public” to act on the information.
Today, news outlets and irritated bloggers routinely spotlight inane media pitching. Among the more prominent finger-pointers is The Bad Pitch Blog, an increasingly popular “service” started by PR pros Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan. Reporters around the national now forward material to Bad Pitch Blog. And some of it just makes you wince.
Take for example the guy who pitched Business Week on interviewing his management consultant client following the death of Enron CEO Ken Lay:
“Lay's death may be the equivalent of a child sticking their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing something bad. But a lot more final,” he wrote, adding that his client had “some interesting thoughts on the demise of Ken Lay and how others can avoid his fate.”
Like many such ham-fisted efforts to sway the press, I’m assuming that the resulting publicity wasn’t exactly what the guy’s client had in mind.
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