How PR piss off tech journos (and what the tech journos don’t dare to say)
Seth Porgas for CruchGear.com listed a few PR don’t do list that could piss off journalists.
Below are some of themediaslut’s favourites.
From CruchGear.com :
You Can NEVER Confirm Placement
If I had a dollar for every PR person who asked me to “confirm placement” or questioned why a product they thought was “confirmed” wasn’t in the final issue, I’d be able to start my own PR company. Here’s the deal: Until I edit, publish, and buy all the ads in my own magazine, there is no possible way of confirming anything. I may think your product kicks ass, but there are a thousand other editors with a thousand other viewpoints who might beg to differ. And ad pages come in and out, meaning editorial pages are gained and lost on a whim. Things always get cut. Remember that just because I’m your contact guy at a magazine doesn’t mean I run the whole thing.Don’t Talk To Me Like I’m A Client
There a few words no writer ever wants to hear come from a PR person’s mouth (or email). Anything that sounds like the type of managerial speak they teach you in entry level PR courses should be left there. Let’s put it this way, it’s dehumanizing (and a bit insulting) to hear the word “pitch” used in earnest.
themediaslut would like to add the following to the list.
Don’t whine to get journos to attend event
Besides the thousands of press releases that a tech journalist receives everyday, the tech journalist also gets hundreds of invites to launches.
Once in awhile, a PR would call themediaslut and whine about not having enough numbers at an event.
If themediaslut could make it, or the event is interesting, of course themediaslut would do her best to attend.
Instead the PR should provide one or two good reasons that themediaslut should attend.. some reason that themediaslut can justify to her editors.
To make things worst, some PR expect you to do a placement of the event after whining (begging) that themediaslut attend the event.
Don’t promise exclusive if it is not an exclusive
Another PR mistake is to promise a tech journalist an exclusive when another 10 journalists were promised the same exclusive.
That isn’t an exclusive and it gives PR a bad name.
If you are a journo reading this, please share your pet PR peeve by putting a comment below. Thanks.
A 20 year veteran of the news business and current flack, my comments are in a recent post on A Stern Glance Media Relations: Four Rules.
“Finally, don’t call the editor or the newspaper your targeting. First, he or she, in all likelihood, isn’t going to write the story; second, and far more importantly, few tactics are more offensive to a reporter than a PR pro calling his editor to pitch a story. On the other side of that coin, if your staff or agency doesn’t know any better, you are going to have some very significant media relations challenges, if you don’t already have them.” from A Stern Glance.
The above has never been truer.