Slick’s Twitter Pitch Fit

Slick’s Twitter Pitch Fit
This is the first pitch wherein I can out the author because they pitched me on Twitter in plain, permalinked view of the world.

This bad pitch shows a clear lack of understanding of Twitter. As we approach Valentine’s Day, I do not have a heart on for this pitch from @twsprfirm. Its only accomplishment is finding how to suck in less than 140 characters.

@NABJ @royaletee @prblog Check out The #UnAgency Approach from Atlanta Based Agency ~ Press Release: http://twitter.com/twsprfirm/status/7647442425" - TWS The UnAgency (@twsprfirm)

How do I hate thee? Let me post the ways.

Mass = No Class
On first view, I have no clue who @NABJ or @royaltee are. This confirms the obvious -- it’s a mass pitch. And using Twitter as a completely impersonal broadcast mechanism is short-sighted.

UnAgency = UnCool
The clear self-importance of this firm is enough to put me off. And telling someone you’re an unagency is like telling someone that you’re cool. If you have to tell someone? It’s probably not true.

Participate = Pitch
If TWS’ claims were legit, they’d follow the Twitter Rule of Thirds.

1) Push Value Links: You consume media in some capacity every day. When you see something of interest, push it out on Twitter. How often have you benefitted from someone else
doing the same?

2) Talk WITH People: Twitter is for conversation. If all you’re doing is talking TO people? It’s like picking up the phone and not letting the other person get in a word edgewise. They will tune you out.

3) Self-Promote: Twitter is fine for self-promotion – even the self-promotion that @twsprfirm is trying to accomplish here. But if it's your first interaction with someone on Twitter...or this is all they do on Twitter? It’s all noise.

Following the above guidelines when using Twitter means you’re participating vs. pitching someone.

Eschew Automation
The pitch reminds me of automated direct messages. Sending an auto DM right after someone follows you is like suggesting you to go to a hotel room on a first date. Slow down there tiger.

Impersonal is intensified when it’s done via social media. So be careful or be prepared to feel the UnLove.

"There Be No Vapor": A Lesson In Good Pitch Practice

Last week I was quoted in a major (so to speak) publication saying that most corporations put out vapor like it's flowing water. The question reached my messy desk: What is and what isn’t vaporous today?

Let’s review the facts: There are only so many reporters covering the field or industry you play in, whether it’s automotive technology, software, clothing, or architectural design. With time and experience, you will wind up speaking to them all one day—or their brethren. In a world of instant comm and ever-shrinking inner circles, a PR person who cries wolf with a few off-mark pitches is blackballed in a real hurry.

There’s nothing the media dislikes more than vapor (a non-story), so don’t pitch it. Click over to Business Wire (http://www.businesswire.com/) or any of its ilk on a given day and you can count up hundreds of thousands of dollars spent propagating vapor news. “Small Company A Signs Agreement with About-to-Fold Company B” or “InterSlice Tech.com Launches Bleeding-Edge Customer Tracking Functionality.” Find us a journalist who actually wants to write about topics like that (how do they affect anyone else besides the people who wrote the releases?) and we will tip our hats to that PR person (who has a reporter cousin, of course).

The danger in vapor is that it builds a name for you quickly. The wrong name. If you’re dabbling in handheld technology, say, and you pitch Ken Li, our favorite well-known gadgetry journalist, on every software upgrade, he’s going to learn very rapidly not to take seriously any pitch you send his way. Who cares? The danger is that when you have real news, the kind that matters, such as the launch of your new device that makes the iPad shake in its boots, Ken will not pay attention because you’ve proven yourself to be a vapor merchant.

Before you blast out a cluster bomb of e-mails or send that release over the wire, consider long and hard what’s interesting about it. Is it fascinating just because you’ve spent three tireless months working on the content? Is it amazing because your latest noodling brings you one step closer to a competitor that no one’s ever heard of? If that’s the case, hold off and wait ’til you have something worthier of the presses; in other words, don’t believe your own story too much.

Larger public companies are darn guilty of pushing vapor into the press. There’s a theory out there, one we don’t subscribe to, that if you don’t have a steady, weekly stream of information crossing the wires—also known as “the machine”—your business’s progress has sunk to an uncompetitive pace. Remember that with public companies, their news unfortunately engenders an article or two (unfortunately, because it makes the firm think that what they put out is urgent, and so it compels them to keep the vapor machine oiled).

Yet when this non-urgent-news-pushing firm truly has something worth chatting about, the press, bloggers or loud-colored tattoo artists may not bite. Everyone at the firm scratches their heads and wonders why. But reporter types and analysts are glazed over from the hundreds of newsless missives shot through that PR cannon. And they are too familiar with firms that cry wolf.

The take away from all this is that vapor works only rarely. For example, it did for Seinfeld. If what you desire is real, respected coverage continually, sit on the vapor - “CEO sneezed today!” - and don’t put it out there. You’ll only numb the reporters who should care and who should notice that what you do is (yes it is) important

Any questions? As Gary Hart once mischievously said: Bring 'em on...

Twitter @laermer or @badpitch

Five Stories About The Media!

Hello, participants in this experiment. You are reading the premier of a regular Bad Pitch Blog post, “Five Stories About The Media!” I hope you enjoy it and know it’s impossible not to.

De-Hyping David "@carr2n" Carr

In October 2001 I read something in the New York Times that made me think hype was Apple’s only bet—and maybe the brand new “iPod portable music player,” as the Mac device was then known, might not be as substantial as its over-the-top pre-release made it to be. I wrote my thoughts down and it crept into the Times on 11/1/01:

“Hype is of no value unless it's got some substance. Apple may have done a great job explaining exciting products in the past, but the truth is that hype is at an all-time high, so nothing is worthy of secretive media treatment.

My advice: remember that cynicism beats all expectations. The only way to make sure your New Thing gets 'good ink' is to share it with reporters ahead of time. Oh, and make the best product you can because technology doesn't wow 'em like it used to.”

Which brings me to the NYT this week and its David Carr column (“Conjuring Up the Latest Buzz, Without a Word”), which was one long statement about hype—written with a hypester’s eye and a frothing need to disclose the columnist’s adoration for the new tablet machine coming out from those fancy folks from Apple. (Well, I stopped reading Carr regularly a while ago since it’s usually about Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo!, and I can find those opinions on blogs minute by minute.) This column caught me because he decided to jump on the hype bandwagon and I saw a quote jump out at me that has a great lesson for us all:

In the piece, the word magic was conjured up so many times that my eyes never stopped rolling. Everyone quoted says precisely what Carr directs them to: Apple “makes things rather than talks about” them. Never does a beta. Yet Apple product users without stars in their eyes know that a first generation of anything is a beta test that we all take part in. To say that Apple is releasing products in a cloud of openness … is not responsible journalism, even for an opinion creator.

The beta testing of objects is ill-advised these days. You are laughed at heartily if your company claims the test is only for a handful. (It’s even funnier to keep things in phony beta for five years like Googlers!) The idea is to open up everything—“Here we are!”—and make users a part of the progress. That’s what smart PR people do with their company products—kicking and screaming included.

I have no idea what Mac-o-file Steve Levy of Wired.com was smoking when he told Carr that Apple is more disciplined than all other tech firms: “Other companies put things in beta…let people try it out and then bring it out…With Apple, they say nothing, build the suspense and then say: ‘Here it is. You may discuss.’ Other companies don’t have … the heart to do that.”

Say what? This tablet computer isn’t a beta? While it may be on sale any minute, it’ll then be reviewed to death by bloggers and big mouths and by the end of next month all critiques will be taken into consideration. iTablet 2.0 will hardly be recognizable. Let’s call that a “paid beta!”

Want to know what other companies don’t have the heart to do? Not show Steve Levy or David Carr before the product is officially launched! (You can bet both have seen today’s iTablet in one form or another.) Most CEO and PR types are fearful that both will get mad and say they hate it in print. That’s what I call an ego-buster.

Ryan Is Alive & Well

Is this a coincidence or has Hollywood collided with real life? Watching the Globes two Sundays back I noticed that the name of the actual guy who wrote the winning song for Crazy Hearts—Ryan Bingham –is the exact name as the character Clooney plays in Up In the Air. Now, I know Hollywood works from a single kitchen—but this is ridiculous. Or eerie. Or maybe Clooney does have his hands in EVERYTHING. That scares me.

The H’s Have It

A shout out to HBO.com and HelpAReporter.com, two sites needing overhauls that just this past week did so. HBO.com was first launched by my firm RLM in 1998 (!) where we helped design the now infamous Sopranos mini-site, comprising of a dictionary for words like Bada-Bing and gumar … which was cursed in the media by Italian-Americans way before Jersey Shore was (literally) born. Unlike the Shore, however, HBO.com/Sopranos was useful and had longevity.

Alas, back in the go-go ‘90s, HBO was granted no Time Warner money to do a real site and they just got around to de-brochuring it. Gorgeous. Take a good look—you will see it’s not mere listings for once. As for HARO, they needed an uplifting, less homey destination (some of you know RLM did PR for them last year) and now it’s in fine shape, albeit a little wordy. And to both H’s, I say, “We know you when” – and will know you then!

Game On, Boys!

Are you as tired of hearing about the new DC insider’s book Game Change as I am? Thought you’d say you were. I flipped through most of it at an airport Borders (does anyone work there?), and what cracked me up about its incessant “ah ha!” feel was that I, a National Enquirer reader had already deduced most of the scoops inside. I’m starting to think the Enquirer—and for the record, I read anything I can scoop up from those thinning racks—deserves a Pulitzer Prize for having the cojones to pursue "John Edwards: Sleazebag" when not even I took it seriously.

The authors of Game Change have been everywhere, at every turn, but just once I’d like to see them tilt their heads toward the Enquirer for giving them those leads. (The famous line about Mrs. Edwards refusing to believe her husband is “a monster” came from NE.) But they won’t—because it’s a supermarket rag known for some fabricated stories (“a friend said …”).

You know, if you think about it, Game Change’s HarperCollins and the National Enquirer’s American Media Inc. have a great deal in common:

Both are owned by unstoppable egotists who seek scoops inside every garbage can. Both spend a lot of cash reminding people of that first sentence. Both were targets of terrorists (check Wikipedia). And both are corporations that rehash so much inconsequential, by-the-byway news that I wonder if publishing cares more about Tori’s motherhood tripe than anything real anyway!

Brazen Thought

Last year—the number 9 is one I too want to forget—everyone overused the word “woes” until it finally became meaningless. After all, whose troubles were worse? (See me shrug.) But there’s a word in ‘10 that is used even more incorrectly—and often—in both journalism and advertising that it must be dropped. It’s “brazen.” Suddenly every move anyone makes is considered a brazen one. But I don’t see anyone doing anything except tentatively and so with that I brazenly ask every single person to shut the hell up about what’s considered gutsy and unbelievable.

That’s all I got. Watch for the next column. Yes, those are real sheep.

-Richard Laermer

[Tweet @laermer @badpitch @prblog and anyone else who needs it.]

Boilerplating the "About" Copy

From the "how to end on a lame note department," we bring you the boilerplate. We first wrote about this infinitesimal but iconic news release ending back in 2006.

Bill Sledzik, Associate Professor at Kent State University's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, reminded us of the need to revisit this old gem. We complied because Bill practices what he teaches and he buttered us up by noting: "Bad Pitch is a primary read in our Media Relations class. Message: You don’t wanna wind up here!"

"What about a focus on the very worst in news release boilerplate? What triggered this was something sent to me by a former student. This is a classic, and I plan to feature it in my Media Relations & Publicity class. Not sure I’ve ever seen one this bad."

We changed the names of the innocent. Edits are in ALL CAPS.
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About ACME: ACME offers some of the most innovative, highly advanced and superior quality products on the market today.

ACME is developing innovative products every day. We focus on taking an idea and engineering it into an innovative product design. We will manufacture a prototype and test it across many demographics and target markets. ACME patents all the products we produce with knowledgeable patent attorneys. We send the final prototype overseas for cost effective manufacturing. We also implement sales and marketing to ensure the products reach their target marketplace. We specialize in taking a creative idea, and turning it into an innovative product.

All ACME products are produced under strict ISO 9001 guidelines. ACME has recently moved. The company’s new address is STREET, SUITE, CITY, STATE, ZIP.

Call NUMBER or visit URL.
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Bill wasn't kidding. This one sucks enough to have a class study its level of suckness. Especially when you consider that boilerplates are arguably useless. From our original article on the topic, entitled Much Ado About Nothing:

The Bulldog Reporter defines boilerplate as “text that is reused, as at the end of a news release or in a legal document. The fascinating origin of the word is discussed in "The Skinny" book.”

Legal document? That alone should raise a red flag.

The boilerplate means well. It’s provided as background information, a few sentences to quickly define the main subject of the release.

As news releases are written in inverted pyramid style, the boilerplate is always placed at the end. No one is reading your boilerplate, unless you’re Apple Computer perhaps.

What should be the most general, least important information tends to be the most important based on how much time is spent on this throw away copy. The boilerplate tends to look less like a concise description and more like a piece of copy that emerged from a gauntlet of approvals by people focused more on specific words than overall meaning.

So what’s the magic formula for boilerplates? No magic, just brevity. Describe your company in one or two sentences and throw in its URL for more information. Done.

What's your take on this tiny detail that causes so much agita?

NBC: A Corporate PR Disaster

Gosh, don’t you think all conglomerates would have learned by now how quickly they can be damaged by not checking in with their customers? Who remembers how Tropicana disastrously changed their carton without asking if anyone loved the old one! But no one at NBC Universal Comcast GE Microwave got a whiff of the orange-flavored catastrophe so they stepped right back into shit with their heads in the air. And no matter how they paint this pig, the last-place network has lost a huge swath of TV watchers (and we all watch TV, no matter who says "Not me") by telling us how the Leno drama will end up.

It's as if they thought we would somehow accept their final answer.

A statement along the lines of "Don't worry, we're fine moving Jay into Conan's slot" was a classic that worked great before we became our own TV networks. That is, we are now the people who make the news. Water coolers are no longer where the action is — it's on our handheld Black-i-Pres where we wouldn't dream of quoting a major news story on which we didn’t have an opinion. And yes, there was a time when we might be swayed by the machinations of an evil (but persuasive) newsmaking machine.

Back in the days of The Cosby Show being moved opposite Magnum P.I., a powerful media corporation could dictate a success by aggressively shoving a plethora of ads down our shrugging throats. (Even in 2005, when Grey's transferred to Thursdays, it worked because "Choose Thursday" was plastered behind every toilet!) But now we do the shoving. We are the tweeters and status updaters and IMers and G-talkers who make opinionated decisions based on how we feel about the deciders. Zucker & Co. will find their unsubtle ways emulated by the people as we take our fight to the well-oiled Internet.

And so this will be an unwinnable public fight that an old-fashioned conglomerate will regret.

It only gets worse for NBC who has to wince as side-show celebrities take sides in an ugly, unfettered way. The slot winner (Jay) has a single star in his corner —Seinfeld – who is currently on the NBC payroll! The fourth-place network has committed to his tacky reality series, soon to be renamed Jerry Is a Whore. Rosie O and Jimmy K have been nastily telling Jay to do "the right thing" so Conan can retain the throne — Kimmel went so far as to say "We have children — you have cars." Alas, NBC has become so righteous and indignant that if Leno did say I'm out of here there's simply no way NBC could keep the 11:35 p.m. brand from doom. Really, this is a circus created in less than a month that should never have gone this far.

NBC played it too close to the chin — er, vest and did not look our way. It's a corporate error still mass-produced by many media companies as they leak news to same-size media companies and believe we will accept the verdict because it's all business and nothing is personal. But NBC chieftains (like those orange dudes) are not cognizant of how much personal time we spend laughing at the disasters powerful people make every day. We laugh at the news — we laugh at the way it is covered — we laugh at the tone. Our thought is always, "As if we don't already know what's going on."

We already know NBC is scared witless they made a mistake. And they never bothered to come to us for advice. And that is PR 101.

NBC Universal needed to concoct an online forum using the requisite tools — Twitter, Facebook, a popup micro-site, Linked-in, even colorless NBC.com — to gather ideas given to them by a few who care who hosts what. If they had, they'd be in a powerful position to say "We got this data from knowledgeable, helpful participants." The results might have surprised them.

What we have here is a unique dilemma: Two big players on one network is normal — but one is always more popular by far. Jay Leno is the handy standby who luckily signed a decent contract allowing him to work until he drops dead. Conan O'Brien is the risky business decision — quirky, unbalanced, nervous-to-a-fault, freakishly tall — now being thrown out like yesterday's omelet because his early show didn't rise to hit levels by usual standards. These are two separate stories that should not have competed for public attention. Leno should have been put on hiatus — isn't that word that everyone uses for cancellation anyway?

I'm surprised, too, that GE has such a short memory about Tonight. Doesn't Zucker have copies of memos about how poorly Leno performed post-Johnny Carson? NBC stood firm with carefully crafted press statements until Leno started winning. The holders of the pink slips did the same for an unknown O'Brien when he took Letterman's 12:35 a.m. show with little notice. [NBC was always the evil empire. They started the Irishman with 26-week contracts.]

In 1993, remember that Letterman was god, but the notion of canning Leno after seven months and playing musical time periods was unfathomable. It's insulting to the host and the well-honed staff that has just gotten going; still, it would have been seen as a slap to viewers who may not be watching but waited to see what others thought about the change.

In 2010, anyone who stumbled out of bed knows that O'Brien's ratings were low, but Nielsen is only a part of the equation today. The viralness of some of the current Tonight stunts have been gaining ground and people began to talk...which always leads to an increase on TV and a lot of sponsored Hulu hits. Simultaneously, NBC ruined The Jay Leno Show by forcing the host to stand in as PR guy for really boring network stars from their own troubled (read stale) programming. Zachary Levi is colorful on Chuck, but come on!

Now the online/offline/phone-addicted public has their arms firmly folded (and they will remain that way) because NBC drop-kicked the redhead and never checked with 24/7 tweeters to ask how they would feel about a switch.

Doesn't NBC know anyone over at Tropicana?

Funny thing is — asking people ("in an Internet chat where we discussed our problems") gives these suits an ability to claim, say a year from now, that O'Brien was paid out because the viewers spoke up and said it was time for a change. Key word: time.

And the current big-rating monologues are silly ("Guess what," murmured O'Brien, "I've been offered a role in a porno...and I'm considering it!") and are helping no one. It's fun like the proverbial poke in the eye.

Don't you find it uncomfortable watching two corporate stooges poking fun at one another while competitors use their public fight to bring viewers in? (Seth Meyers on SNL: "This week you didn't need Cinemax to see someone get screwed on TV.") The pit bosses know the two Tonight hosts' careers have been irreparably blown and still neither's camp has done anything but cower--and bitch. The "Team Conan" concept is a tween-era marketing boon for the Twilight set that won't mean more people turning in after he moves to E!.

In a week, the dust is sure to settle. Tonight is Conan's last gig on NBC. Leno will pop back up at 11:35 p.m. (wistfully, with his lips smacking); Conan will get a million viewers who can locate him after Chelsea Handler or Wanda Sykes; The Late Show host will be crowing like mad and winning, I guess; and no one will care. By then Charlie Sheen will be jailed, hospitalized or dead and we'll all be jawing about the new laugh riot Toby Maguire on 3 and a Half Men.

After the Vancouver Olympics, no one will talk about NBC — a boycott will be underway — and I'm sure young Fallon will be blamed, tarred and feathered. Those pride-filled peacockers will have a big hole to fill. It will be their mouths.

Because no one in our networked world wants to be told who is good or bad. And as far as numbers, in the DVR Culture world Nielsen no longer holds the cards to what succeeds.

We have them. We deal them every single day.

Twitter @laermer and @badpitch

[This edit had a great assist from @joshuadelung, a PR pro at U.S. Department of Energy, and an excellent proofreader.)

Will a Facebook Ad Land a PR Job Seeker His Next Gig?

Here's a good pitch of a different breed. Checking into Facebook a few days ago, I noticed the ad above. Impressed by his approach, I offered Grant a guest post on The Bad Pitch Blog. So here is his post. Then I'll tell you why I'm impressed by the ad.

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Going Guerrilla to Get the Gig

Want to increase your professional network and as a result increase your opportunity to land that coveted interview or job? If you are seeking out that next job in the current job market like so many are, including myself, the answer is probably a resounding “YES!” The secret: Facebook Advertising.

After learning about the power and affordability of this under-utilized tool last December from Jay Conrad Levinson and David Perry’s very helpful book Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 I decided to give it a try as part of my overall strategy to secure a job in PR and the results have been great!

For the cost of about $50 over the past three weeks approximately 200 people have clicked on the ad and been directed to my online resume.

This has not landed me the ultimate prize of a job, but it has resulted in the following ROI: 50% increase in my professional network of contacts on LinkedIn, an internal recommendation to Porter Novelli’s HR dept. by a managing partner and preferred candidate status in Edelman’s HR database per a senior executive’s recommendation.

What makes Facebook Advertising so effective for a job seeker is that it is allows you to target your ad to the specific audience you want to reach. In my case I was able to target only those Facebook users that work at the top ten PR firms and companies I most want to work for.

Bottom line: I recommend that every job seeker looking to increase their professional network and potentially land that next job sooner rather than later try placing at least one Facebook ad.

By Grant Turck, [@GrantTurck]

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Book fed or not, this strategy is smart for a variety of reasons.

1) The Busy Road Less Traveled: Facebook has 350 million users. And while plenty of people are advertising on the social media network, how many of them are looking for a job? Grant's strategy is getting attention, which leads to momentum in the search which leads to the gig. Beats standing on a street corner wearing a sandwich board.

2) Show Don't Tell: You're already intrigued by Grant's approach if you click through the ad. It shows he is familiar with social networking at a minimum. So Grant is already moving in the right direction before you even see his resume.

3) Paid vs. Earned Media: Buying the ad shows Grant realizes that PR or social media do not operate in a vacuum. Using a mix of disciplines makes him a more valuable candidate. Tip: Don't forget to leverage owned media...your own content...online via LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and/or Slideshare. Then link to it like it's hot and pass those links around like joints at Snoop Dogg's house.

One to Grow On

The Bad Pitch Blog will give Grant one tip for his search. Drop us a line after you land your next job. Drop everyone you came into contact during this process a line and let them know where you are at. Why let all of that networking die after you secure the job?

And you will secure your job. The process is a lot like media relations. And in both, you will succeed quickly if you stand out for the right reasons. Grant certainly does.

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Kevin Dugan

Richard Laermer

Bad Pitch Blog