The problem:
Honestly, NO ONE in the world could be a more HORRID PR practitioner than Lois Whitman-Hess. You didn’t hear about her? Click here, or here. This is a woman who thinks that just because a reporter is attending a tradeshow, they HAVE to meet with her client. This is a woman who CALLS 45 reporters at the Wall Street Journal in ONE day. This is a woman who spams journalists like it’s cool. This is the kind of PR practitioner that makes bloggers think “PR” is a bad word.
WE GET IT. There are some REALLY HORRIBLE public relations practitioners out there.
The solution:
Bloggers- I want to ask you a HUGE favor for 2009. HUGE. I want to see one of you- one of you with the respect of the entire PR industry start a new blog or weekly column. It will be called: The PHENOMENAL PITCH BLOG or something similar. In this blog/column, you will call out the most outstanding PR pitches you have heard and call out the individuals who pitched. This will be the anti-blacklist. (The White-list. Generic. You get the idea.)
The philosophy:
I don’t think people learn from rants. (Ironic since I am writing one.) I think people learn best from shining examples of good. In 2008, we’ve suffered through the economy, and if there is one thing that social media has taught me, it’s that (most of the time) positivity rises to the top while negativity sinks, ignored. Maybe if we have a list of GREAT PR folks, people will strive to MAKE the list. Let’s give PR people something to strive toward, not a list of avoid.
What now?
I’m one person. A PR person, a blogger. If you agree, if you want to see the PHENOMENAL PITCH BLOG come to life… forward this blog. Who will do it for us? For the WHOLE public relations industry?
I would be forever grateful.
[…] are so convoluted, I don’t have a clue what the product is. So in the spirit of holiday, and a good suggestion, I’m occasionally going to highlight press releases that are clear, cogent and brief. […]
Jen – I’m one of the many other PR pros who cringed reading about Ms. Whitman-Hess. And from someone who’s been in the business for so long! Aiiii.
We have the Bad Pitch Blog, which I love, and the writers do share good pitches every once in while, but I agree it would be awesome to see more pitches that work for bloggers. Even for those of us who’ve been in PR for almost two decades, we’ve only been working with bloggers for a fraction of that time.
After all, every blogger can’t know about every single thing of interest to them without some type of outside influence. If done correctly and with the proper forethough, bloggers could just learn about something they find of interest via a – dare I say – PR person.
Jen – I too think I’m one of the “other” PR pros. Sure, there’s been a misstep in ol’ career once in awhile, but for the most part I really try to be sure I only contact people when I can add value. Even here, I’m commenting because I want to second your idea and support your rant. I enjoy Bad Pitch Blog too but it would be so much better if I could share with my team what you SHOULD do in addition to what you shouldn’t and give them shiny, happy examples of good PR.
Now there are bloggers out there that have written some of these pieces about good PR people so I’ll have to see if I can dig some up. Thanks for bringing this up though. Maybe you’ll start a whole new trend. (I hope!)
Jen –
Kudos to you for writing this. Like Rebecca stated above, I hope this starts a new trend. This also reminds us that we need to invest in our future PR pros so they learn to practice PR the right way.
Jen,
I’ll do it. I’ll set it up in WordPress tonight. Great idea, love the positivity.
Lindsay
Jen:
As the #2 man at Linkedin’s public relations experts, according to employers, I probably not qualified to say much. I’ve worked with several agencies, and they are all the same.
Agencies are owned by people who last week were media buyers or waitresses. This spring I abruptly quit one agency when the owner walked in and told me to call all the TV news crews and tell them WHEN they would be at an event “because we spend good money advertising on those stations.” (She was media buyer in a past life.)
Yet, when it comes to filling corporate jobs, the Lois Whitman-Hess’s of this world are the ones that get the jobs. The pros are tossed out to do telemarketing to pay their bills.
So the campaign should not be against Lois Whitman-Hess. It should be against clients who hire her and employers who hire her ilk.
Typo alert – I’m not I in first line.
To Rebecca Rose – try prmuseum.com. Chester Burger is one of my mentors. Read his and Bill Cantor’s book, Experts in Action. Also anything with Curt Linke’s name on it; also Otis Baskin or Cutlip, Center and Broom’s PR textbooks.
toughsledding.wordpress.com
marketingsociologist.wordpress.com
tweenmarketing.blogspot.com
Thanks for all of the resources Richard! And to all, for the comments. I hope we can all bring about positive change together!
As a blogger, I have been put on lists and get PR spam. Why would you send me a press release? I have Google Alerts, RSS feeds, and PR newswire. I don’t need more spam in my email.
Have you read my blog? Because clearly most have not. (And I write 4 blogs so which one are you talking about?)
Why not start an dialogue? “Hey, do you cover XYZ on your ACME blog?”
Easy. Simple. Takes a second.
Rad Blogging: PR folks need to go back to the basics. Building relationships (we all say time and time again) is the key to social media success. Personally, I DO read (and subscribe to) every blog I pitch. But I know most don’t. Productive PR takes time. It relies on relationship building and relevant information sharing.
I hope the dialogue starts (at least on a general level) with the “Good Pitch Blog.” Open sharing from bloggers combined with positive pitch case studies will hopefully inspire change.
Gross. Puke blog… rant on PR tools, puke; go to HR and puke, sell my shit and move to Asia, vomit over crappy wanna-be-artists, puke some more and… yeah, you got it.
I crated a “Good Pitch Blog” waaaay back in 2006. It died from lack of entries. The good PR pros are too busy being successful for clients to toot their own horns. “Cobbler’s children have no shoes,” I guess.
http://goodpitch.blogspot.com/
Great comments. I don’t care what profession you’re in, that fine line between being ruthless and getting results with integrity is where we have to walk. They used to call it the High Road.
Hi Jen, a great post with some interesting insights.
I’ve never heard of Lois (probably as a result of being on this side of the pond!), but wow – truly cringe worthy.
But I think it’s worth looking beyond people like her for a second. I am not 100% comfortable with the way bad PRs are currently pinpointed by bloggers.
That’s because often, it’s not the Lois Whitman-Hess’s of this world who are named and shamed, but some hapless exec who has simply been guilty of human error.
Result – their alleged transgression is searchable by future employers, colleagues, friends etc, forever after.
Mainstream journalists don’t call out bad PR people except on special occasions, and so I think it should be for online.
I mean, after all. As we all know there’s a tried and tested way of weeding out bad pitches and practitioners, namely getting no results!
But yes, I agree with Richard that sadly that doesn’t always act as a barrier to career progression in our game.
So, I think a good pitch blog is a great idea, and would allow everyone to learn from best practice examples.
BTW, Richard, I’ve never been a media buyer…but I was a sliver service waiter for a while at college. Does that count 😉
I’m a big fan of finding solutions to problems rather than simpling complaining. Complaining is just wasted energy. A White List would be far more productive.
This is a great idea – it’s all too easy to have a go at bad PRs and ignore those who get on and do their job properly, as Rebecca Rose said, it’s all about adding value and it seems that the PRs that do that aren’t acknowledged.
On the other hand, adding value is what PRs should be doing in the first place – it’s kind of like the good ref/bad ref analogy that if the referee has a great game, you own’t notice he’s there and he won’t get applauded, but if he has a bad game you notice and he gets abused!
I’m a BIG fan of this idea. It’d be great to find some UK AND US journalists who would contribute and see if/how things differ on both sides of the pond and how we can learn from each other.
Did you know that Twitter doesn’t have a business plan – and has no way of generating revenue? They have been capitalized by investors who, surely at some point, will want a return on their investment. So now that you see the value of the service, how much would you pay per tweet?
Rick: Yes, I know that Twitter is not producing any income other than what they raise via capital. I have heard rumors that they are going to start charging businesses (as opposed to individuals) who Tweet in the coming year, but I don’t have any proof to that rumor. I have also heard rumors that they can generate capital via advertising. Both of these ideas make sense to me.
I will say, for me personally, I would not “pay per Tweet.” I would consider some kind of monthly service, but I would caution Twitter not to be too greedy in the face of what they have previously given out for free.
I’m not a PR person, I’m a marketer, but I love your idea and will share it on all the bookmarking and social sites I’m on. I totally agree that we learn more from people who set good examples rather than bad ones. My sister majored in PR and ended up in marketing for this exact reason.
OK, here’s my problem with your post — I think you confuse having a forum with being a reporter. It’s important to gather facts before passing judgment, please.
Lois Whitman is not the kind of person that thinks just because you’re attending a trade show, you have to meet with her clients. (and how would you know?) She IS the kind of person that thinks just because you’re attending a trade show, and you have registered as media, and the rules plainly state that your email will be made public, that unless you are just off the turnip truck, you must know your email will be blasted to every PR person attending same show.
She posted 45 emails to reporters at BOTH NYT and WSJ; you need to be accurate. You said she emailed 45 reporters at WSJ alone. You’ve pretty much worked for a name brand in your nascent career, right? Try schilling for 15 under-the-radar companies every month. 15 clients x 3 calls per client — well, you can do the math, right? It’s not altogether implausible that you’d wind up with 20+ calls to both publications on behalf of various clients, especially pre-CES.
Again, please do your homework before trashing someone with such a headline. She actually is one of the best PR practitioners in the industry — it’s just that truly, she might even admit to having the nastiest temper in PR and isn’t afraid to call reporters on their overblown senses of self sometimes.
Good luck to you.
Michelle,
Thank you very much for your post. I always find it interesting to have differing thoughts on a subject matter, and you definitely gave me things to think about this evening.
I can appreciate where you are coming from in reference to Lois, and I want to first state that I never attempted to use this forum to report on “news” or to be an authority. I attempt to use my blog to share my opinions on hot topics in social media and hopefully, make some positive changes.
It has always been my opinion that (some) bloggers use (certain) PR people’s errors and/or bad practices to show that the entire industry is flawed. Based on what was reported by reporters, other than myself (who I linked to) it does seem that Lois has erred in many ways. It is not my place to judge her.
What I did do with this post was judge the BLOGGERS who insist on constantly judging the PR industry.
I want nothing more than to focus on the positive. I want to hear more stories about good pitches. I want to hear about PR people who thought about a new tactic and made great strides. I want bloggers writing about, and touting those individuals.
I don’t know if you work with Ms. Whitman, but I would invite you to share with us some of her great successes. I, for one, am over hearing how she erred. She can’t have all those clients because she’s horrible… can she?
Although it’s a nice idea to share best practice pitches on blogs to help other PR’s to ‘get it’, i think that if you’re not already ‘getting it’ and coming up with your own great and effective pitches, then you’re in the wrong industry.
Online PR is not something you copy and paste from other peoples pitches. it’s a long process of trial and error and using common sense, treating bloggers with respect and being transparant. Anyone can do it but it’s a process.
There is no quick fix. Either you invest the time to develop the skills and the online PR dept or you leave it to those who can do it properly.
Sean
Good call. Slagging off makes for a good zippy read… Takes more heart and a brain to post best practices. Also a much better way of marketing yourself. My best examples of media pitches are all by phone or in a bar near closing time. Email sucks for this kind of thing. The best PR’s are always those who have a real relationship…. and the pitch is never really a pitch
Michelle,
I understand that the CES media list will be made public but does that mean that gives pr practitioners the right to spam? From what I read, phonescoop was pitched by HWH and they don’t even cover the hard drive sector. Just because my number is in the phone book does not mean I want to be called by everyone else who has access to the book! I don’t agree with Chris Anderson’s blacklist because Wired does cover a huge area of tech but if the phonescoop story is true, that is a huge black eye for Lois. Please clarify if I’ve heard wrong…
Hi Michelle,
Interesting debate following your post. Blogger relations is getting reasonable traction in Ireland now for the very same reason that PR companies were treating bloggers the same way as the media and usually this resulted in just adding to a distibution list. In light of this an Irish blogger has organised a series of meet ups see http://mulley.ie/blog/2009/02/collision-course-ii-final-details-sharing-is-caring/. It should be interesting to see what comes of it but one recent high profile campaign was launched to the blogging community before going live see http://www.mulley.net/2009/02/18/bord-gais-energy-supply-did-something-interesting-last-night/
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