"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