Dear PR Flack:
What, exactly, were you trying to get across with the voicemail that began:
“Hi, we just wanted to reach out to you to touch base with you so we could connect with you…”
Um, does your firm give douchebag vocabulary lessons before they let you pick up the phone?
xoxo,
- The Tech Chick
Dear PR Flack,
How ironic that your boss’s most recent blog entry focuses on crafting better pitches. Too bad you didn’t follow his advice!
Here are a few tips you might have missed:
1. Cameron is not our blog’s main writer — he posts about every 3 months, whereas I write multiple times a week — so I am not sure why you are addressing your pitch to him.
2. We write about real food on our blog, so Sandra Lee’s new book is not going to be of interest to our readers.
3. We partner with Amazon AStore, so I can’t imagine why you’d think we’d be interested in sending our readers to [your client's competing site].
If you can’t be troubled to do even the most basic research, we can’t be troubled to read your pitches. Please remove us from your firm’s contact list immediately.
xoxo,
- Anita (and Cameron)
Dear PR Flack:
No, I don’t know how many people open my e-mails, but I do know that if they open them they’ll find me calling them by their name, rather than someone else’s name.
As you say in the body of your pitch, people definitely rather like it when an e-mail is addressed to them. Especially one proclaiming to be from an organization that can help you to deliver better e-mail pitches. Mr. Creamer is a wonderful, accomplished chap I’m sure. But I go by Mr. Bloom. Or, even better — for that “personal” touch — you can call me Jonah.
xoxo,
- Jonah
Dear PR Flack:
1) I’m not sure you sent this “Dear editor” email to the right place: I’m not an editor, and I do have a name. It’s pretty easy to find, too, at the top of every post.
2) When you say “I am following up on a pitch letter I sent you a few days ago”, you might want to check that you actually did pitch me before. You didn’t. And thank god for that.
3) Do you see any recipes on our site that call for crappy HFCS- and transfat-riddled candy bars? No? Oh, see, that’s because we write about real food. So why the hell did you send me this pitch?
4) I’m looking at your firm’s Code of Ethics. Does spam-pitching fall under “acting as responsible advocates for those we represent”?
5) If you can’t be bothered to do the most basic research, I have no interest in hearing about your clients’ news. Please remove me from your contact list.
xoxo,
- Anita
Dear PR Flack:
If I may quote your CEO’s blog entry from August 22nd of this year: “In essence, there are many ways one can utilize social media today to become a better PR pro.”
One of those ways is NOT mass-emailing bloggers. Just as you wouldn’t send out a blanket pitch to a randomly generated media list, similar rules apply for social media (especially in the tight-knit food blog world). We expect that PR pros will take a few seconds to weed out inappropriate blogs on a list, learn what the remaining blogs’ foci are, and then customize and target the most relevant pitches and messages accordingly.
After all, if your CEO publicly called out an account rep at [a competing agency] for pitching him and his blog on a service they were representing (which he pointed out, and I agree, was a clear lack of targeting or research on [the other guy]’s part), why would [your agency's] employee commit a similar foul?
One last thing: I think you meant to quote Bobby Flay as saying, “I bathe in it.” Not, “I bath in it.”
xoxo,
- Carol
Dear PR Flack:
Learn how to spell my name, because it ain’t with an “f”!
I shall now commence to ignore you, Caytie.
xoxo,
- Stephanie
Dear PR Flack:
Our cocktail-focused blog — with authors in New York,
LA, SF, and Wisconsin — doesn’t need to know what kind of wood
tables your client’s Chicago restaurant has.
xoxo,
- The Cocktailians
Dear PR Flack:
Given that the tagline of our blog is “The Continuing Adventures of a Couple of San Francisco Food Dorks”, what made you think we’d be interested in how The Lower East Side celebrates New York City Apple Day?
And, by the by, there’s no such thing as a “first annual” anything. The word you’re grasping for is “inaugural”.
xoxo,
- Anita
Dear PR Flack:
This is the second time I’ve received this pitch from you — there was no news value the first time, and just changing the font and adding a logo doesn’t make it any more newsworthy, in case you were wondering. At the very least, you could have spent your time strengthening the writing or building a stronger pitch with actual news value, but I’m sad to see that didn’t happen.
Take it from someone who has been doing public relations and media relations for the past 20 years and has owned her own successful public affairs firm since 2001, emails like this give the entire profession a bad name.
xoxo,
- Carol
Dear PR Flack:
Does my blog photo make me look like a co-ed who plays a lot of field hockey? Because I’m truly puzzled as to what else might have convinced you I’d promote your bizarre sports drink/college voter drive.
xoxo,
- Anita
