This pitch is bad enough that we considered breaking the three strikes rule and outing the sender. It's getting passed around the PR back channel and may not have as much traction as Cigar Guy, but here's the email subject and lead:
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Story Idea: Nike’s Nightmare: Battling Bedbugs and Bloggers
Nike has bedbugs? Eww, gross! Nike’s flagship store in New York City was closed after an infestation of bedbugs was discovered, but they be just the start of Nike’s problems. Another, and potentially more disastrous, “bug” may be looming in the recesses of their computers.
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So if you had to guess what the pitch is about, you'd be safe in assuming Nike was somehow involved. And you'd be wrong. The brand and the bugs are a red herring. Just like my Black Eyed Peas reference in the headline.
It reminds me of a dot com machination known as ticker spam. "Publicity hungry companies" would stick stock symbols in their news release...another nefarious use for the boilerplate...so it would get picked up by online filters looking for news about that company.
"A million plus with binoculars..."
Red herrings aside, "eww, gross" aside, let's assume this pitch was actually about Nike. Let's assume it was relevant to my coverage and I was interested in the pitch. The grammar is enough to stop me cold.
The sender breaks the deal for me with this error. It's an error that a Microsoft Word spell check would pick up. Instead this error inspires posts like this one. Admittedly other egregious errors like using who vs. whom would be noticed, but they would not take me down a similar path.
This "be just the start" of bad grammar we've seen in the past. Should we handle all of them equally? What grammatical errors leap to the top of your pet peeve list?
For some reason the use of over versus more than always gets me. (Hint: over is spatial.) Damn Journalism 101!
ReplyDeleteThis comment was initially left by Krystle. It was accidentally rejected instead of published so this is my only option for pushing it live.
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The idea that bad pitches can live on forever reminds me of a discussion I was having in class at UCLA reminding PR professionals to be careful what we say on twitter. Even if we would like to delete something, once we say it on twitter we cannot unsay it. In this age of new social media, it is important to remember that what you "put out there" you can never take back. No matter what type of privacy settings you have, you must assume that someone will always see anything you put online and exercise caution in what information you make public, just as the PR professional must exercise caution in what pitches he or she makes. Bad pitches, and information shared publicly that you wish you had not shared, can live on forever.
Posted by Krystle to The Bad Pitch Blog at 4:01 PM
This just blows my mind. I spend so much time re-reading everything that anyone would see to make sure that it makes sense, it's not even funny. I spend so much time researching my topic to make sure that my pitches are genuinely accurate and well-written.
ReplyDeleteIt almost offends me that someone would use a cop out like attaching an unrelated major company's name to their pitch to get more attention.
As for grammar, I have heard a lot of atrocities but one that bother me the most is "I seen it." It amazes me how often I hear that!!!
"Eww, gross." Yep, that about sums it up!
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