A news release is not a pitch. Well, neither is this intro I just received.Dear Mr. Kevin Dugan,Please consider the press release below for publication in an upcoming issue, either on-line or in print.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Some things evidently are worth repeating as we’ve talked about the need for pitches before.
A pitch should show that you’ve had even the slightest exposure to the outlet and you must also tell the media contact why your news is relevant to them. The above note fails miserably at both.
Would you send a resume to someone without a cover letter? If you did it would come off ham-fisted and it would confuse the recipient.
So extend the same service to the media if you are sending them a news release. Pitch letters and news releases "go together like peas and carrots.”
tags | public relations | PR | media relations | media | good pitch | bad pitch | bad pitch blog
I've only been in this business for 30+ years, so it's possible I missed something, but, by my definition, a news release is a tool to share information which, on its merits, may be newsworthy to multiple media outlets. The journalistic equivalent of a cover letter is a well-crafted lead. Your post implies that news releases should be customized for every recipient.
ReplyDeletepress releases don't have to be customized, but pitches do. i work on both sides of the fence, and as a columnist i often skip over e-blasted news releases. if you want me to cover your product i expect to be wooed, and flirted with. as a PR person i try to pitch story ideas, not just a news release. A little effort goes a long way....
ReplyDeleteThe press release can be uniform, but the accompanying pitch letter/cover letter etc. must be personalised. This is for a couple of reasons - one ideological, one pragmatic.
ReplyDelete1. To actually show some respect to your audience and not just be blathering off on your own "mememememememe" mission.
2. To differentiate yourself from the 100 other emails and press releases that were received that week/day/hour.
The press release is about you. Stays the same (with nuances). The pitch/cover letter etc. is about THEM. And each one of THEM are different and that difference should be acknowledged and respected.
Efia and Peter - Thanks for the feedabck. Well said.
ReplyDeleteShar -- For better or for worse, news releases have been abused so much that people take issue with the format before ever reading the content. As Peter noted, the pitch letter is about how YOUR news outlined in the release applies to them.
That is why I would never recommend sending a news release solo to a blogger. This audience needs to know why the news is important to them.
Part of the problem involves the news hierarchy -- or lack thereof. Personnel releases? Don’t bother with a pitch letter. You won’t/better not be sending that news to the world. It is what it is.
Really big stories become pitch-only situations and are longer burns with only one or two outlets.
That leaves what I will call the mushy middle. News that might not make The Wall Street Journal, but it has value to some outlets. It could have a local angle in your hometowm, a trade angle and a larger business trend angle. All three cannot be captured in one news release lead.
Hope this helps!
perhaps one should also not overuse the mail merge tool. "Dear Mr. Kevin Dugan"?
ReplyDeleteMost reporters I know would have deleted it promptly after reading the greeting line.
I am a director of marketing for a mid-cap company in a very specialized market. I send out a multitude of press releases on a daily basis to several different magazines, bloggers and other media outlets in my industry. I have done my research, crafting releases that suit the writers past topics and interests, and see little effect.
ReplyDeleteThere are many things going on with my company, that I (of course) find newsworthy, but apparently the media outlets in my industry do not seem to think so.
Any suggestions, (Other then maybe I am not a talented writer...HA)
As a third year PR student I am surprised that there is such a low turn-out rate when pitching the media. I have been taught to emulate journalistic writing in terms of accuracy, brevity and conciceness as well as making sure there is a fantastic angle to the pitch. Trying unusual, unique and out of the ordinary approaches will only add to the newsworthiness of your pitch.
ReplyDeleteHello! A Press Release is for that tool called a newswire. Sending releases to editors, bloggers, etc. is a waste of time. My Time!
ReplyDeleteI have Google Alert. I have RSS feeds. I have keyword RSS feeds. I do not - repeat - DO NOT need any PR flack to fill my inbox with anything resembling a release.
Newswire is the tool for that. Email is not the tool for that.
Worst offender: SS|PR.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteThe issue is you have to tailor the news. Some companies are big enough or well followed enough (let's use Apple as a horrndously cliche example) that they can send out a press release about a product and there's a pretty good chance media will be intrigued.
If you're not #1... or #5, it takes more work. And if you have press release diarrhea, no one is going to want to open up your emails.
Be strategic with your approach. Tailor your emails based on what the reporter covers. Help them write their story, if there is a story to be written.
Unfortunately, email has been a great help and a detriment to media relations. Now anyone with a Cison account and mail merge program can blast irrelevant news to the major media, flooding inboxes and making it harder for others to break through with things that could be of use.
I thought news releases need to just state the facts and not have any bias to them. I though they what was important was that it be timely, have local interest, the who what, when, where and why early enough so that a journalist can scan it and the release can have their attention in a short amount of time. I think if one becomes too fancy with the release then they lose interest and thats also why something like 90% of news releases are disregarded.
ReplyDeleteYou say "Would you send a resume to someone without a cover letter?" Ha! I can't even begin to count how many resumes I've received in this fashion. The good news? It saves so much annoying reading - each one goes right in the trash. I'm sure the same is true for lame, impersonal pitch emails. No shortcuts... no free lunches. I guess we PR professionals are still necessary.
ReplyDeleteWe got a great bad pitch today, where an agency went fishing to see what we were doing, so we could help her pitch.
ReplyDeleteYeah, right. That's a productive use of of our time.
http://ztrek.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-stories-are-we-working-on-sheesh.html