“Mommy, We Get Dead Pitches”

Dying to get ink? Unless you work for a funeral home, casket manufacturer or some other rare exceptions, death is NOT a tie-in to your story.

You’d think this was common sense, but we’ve been buried by really bad pitches as some shameless PR practitioners do whatever it takes to get a media placement. That or they are just too uncouth to realize their tie-in is tasteless.

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GSN Honors Actress Maureen Stapleton With Game Show Tribute
Tribute Includes Special Guest Appearances on 'What's My Line'

SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Maureen Stapleton is remembered by GSN with a special airing of two of Stapleton's appearances on WHAT'S MY LINE from 1969 and 1974. GSN has dusted off the reels and will re-broadcast these classic game shows Saturday, March 18th at 3:00AM ET/PT.

Stapleton, who passed away Monday at the age of 80, was a critically acclaimed actress on both stage and screen, winning Tony Awards for her performances in Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo" and for Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Man." She also won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Reds." Stapleton was nominated for three other Academy Awards for her work in "Lonelyhearts," "Airport" and "Interiors."

GSN's tribute includes two mystery guest appearances on the classic game show with such celebrities panelists as Arlene Francis, Bert Convey, Joanna Barnes, Nipsey Russell, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Gene Rayburn and Soupy Sales.

Saturday, March 18th
3:00am, What's My Line with host Wally Bruner originally aired 1969
3:30am, What's My Line with host Larry Blyden originally aired 1974.

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This is how they pay tribute to an actress that wins an Oscar and a Tony? What’s worse, the fact that they aired the tribute at 3am or that they did a press release about it? Shame on you GSN. This is nothing more than a cheap attempt to cash in on some empty transponder time. We won’t even get into the typos and bad grammar.

Transitions and Tie-Ins Take Time
The Bad Pitch blog dug into the topic of pitch tie-ins and transitions with its first guest, David Parmet. Parmet can literally say his clients have been drinking their own wine. He is an ace at taking best-kept-secret brands mainstream and he weighed in on this topic.

“Another bad pitch practice seems to be reading a post or two of my blog and spitting it back to me,” says Parmet. “Yet, their pitch has nothing to do with my blog.”

Parmet’s latest example involves a book publisher referencing Parmet’s issue with the volume of music in Starbuck’s. The 525-word pitch did nothing to connect the two topics. The publicist just wanted to show he was reading David’s blog. “It was the worst segue in history - like going from Black Sabbath to Britney Spears.”

Thinly-veiled attempts at customizing a mass pitch may be worse than no customization at all. The lack of tie-in or transition David references above is what we’ll call six degrees of separation. In honor of the GSN news release above, we’ll also coin the term “spin the wheel tie-ins.” Someone reads the latest headlines, puts them on a wheel and spins to decide which one to use. It’s a losing game.

Both happen when people are more concerned about being timely than taking the time to find a real angle for their story. It takes time to find relevant transitions and tie-ins. You have to be well-read. Current events, as well as your client’s industry news, should be regular reading. One of my mentor’s mantras was “You have to know the news to make the news.” Today you can create custom feeds of only the most relevant news you need to stay up to date. There is no excuse for not being a know it all.

UPDATE: Dunno if it's eerie or depressing, but the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten also sees dead pitches. Hat tip to Peter Himler.

tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | good pitch | bad pitch | bad pitch blog | David Parmet | Gene Weingarten