Putting on my PR Shoes

Whether you realize it or not, I actually wear a lot of...shoes. (Work with me on the metaphor, people.) I don't often wear my work shoes on this blog. I'm not sure I ever have. But I am today. Because the PR person in me really, really wants to talk about this case study.

First you have to go read Jenny's post. (Warning: the language is Rated R.)

I have worked in public relations for more than 15 years. When I started out, we pitched to newspapers and television news -- "traditional media" -- not bloggers. Luckily, I became a blogger before I ever began pitching bloggers in a professional capacity. I have followed puh-lenty of first-hand accounts of bad PR pitches to bloggers.

Sometimes the blunders are rookie mistakes. There are agencies who have yet to recognize the importance of pitching to bloggers, so they mistakenly let the interns do that work. Sometimes the pitches are just sloppy and unprofessional. Again, I don't think these agencies consider bloggers as "professional media."

So what happened here? What makes the BrandLink Communications pitch such a PR fail? If you said a) the VP fell victim to a careless reply-all; or b) he never should have talked that way, even internally, about someone they were pitching; then you are a practical person but you are not a PR professional. Here is where BrandLink really went wrong:



They didn't research their media list.
I can't even fathom how a PR professional creates a media list without going through it outlet by outlet, culling it down. This is not a new or unique approach; it's how you create a list of traditional media. The first rule of media pitching is FIND THE RIGHT PERSON TO PITCH. At a newspaper, that means looking at each reporter or editor: pulling up past articles, seeing what they cover, how they write about it. For a blogger, it's as simple as reading the blog.

If BrandLink had bothered to look at Jenny's blog, they would have known that she has received so many pitches of celebrities doing things that completely lack news value, that she created her Wil Wheaton response specifically in retaliation.

Side note: Jenny isn't even a PR professional, and yet you can learn almost as much from her Wil Wheaton response as you can from four years of college PR classes. Which is just to say, you should click on that link and read it.

Other side note: Wil Wheaton not only fully endorses Jenny's bad-pitch response, he sent her the photo of himself collating paper specifically for that purpose. (I know this because, unlike the PR people at BrandLink Communications, I read Jenny's blog.)

Clearly, BrandLink's primary mistake was that they never should have sent this Kim Kardashian-wearing-panty-hose pitch to Jenny in the first place. I'm not sure exactly who should receive a Kim Kardashian-wearing-panty-hose pitch, but any PR practitioner worth their salt would know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it should most definitely NOT go to Jenny the Bloggess.

Don't they know who she is??
Erica's response to Jenny's Wil Wheaton anti-pitch was way out of line. Not just because the professional reaction would be to either take the hint and ignore Jenny's email, or to recognize the truth in Jenny's email and laugh with her.

The fact that Erica thinks that she can help JENNY THE BLOGGESS get more hits to her website with a Kardashian pitch is ABSURD. Newsflash, Erica: JENNY THE BLOGGESS doesn't need your help to generate ad revenue. Jenny can get one of the most popular guys on the internet to send her a photo of himself collating papers. Jenny by herself has ten times the twitter followers of your entire company. I don't think she needs your help with her blog.

If I owned BrandLink Communications, I'd probably fire Erica before I fired Jose. Jose's screw-up was a stupid mistake. Erica obviously has no business pitching media.

Oh wait. Then Jose went on to tell Jenny she should consider herself flattered to be considered relevant enough to pitch at all. Never mind, he's out of here, too.

You're pitching client stories. You're not Saving The World. 
When I pitch bloggers, I don't do it with form letters. And I do it in a personal, conversational tone. I would never get into an email pissing contest over who was right-er. I definitely would not sniff that WE ARE YOUR LIVELIHOOD.

Social Media rule #1: Admit when you're wrong and move on. The staff at BrandLink needs to drop the attitude that they're higher and mightier than the rest of you unwashed masses who merely self-publish on the internet and start trying to build relationships with the media that they want to work with.

It ain't rocket science, people.

***

I always tell companies that if they want to pitch bloggers, they MUST find someone who has successful experience pitching bloggers. At this writing (10:44 pm CT), Jenny's blog post about the failed pitch has 425 comments. It has been tweeted over 2,000 times and shared 1,900 times on facebook. Jenny and Wil (who also live-tweeted the agency's meltdown) have over 2 million twitter followers; BrandLink has less than 1,000.

Maybe BrandLink is one of those agencies that believes all PR is good PR, in which case, hey, congratulations on the spike in hits to your website today. Make sure when you report those massive numbers to your boss that you leave out the part about how the entire internet can't stand you now.





UPDATE 10 a.m. CT: Jenny's post now has 670 comments, has been tweeted 3,500 times and shared more than 3,400 times on facebook. You can see the direction that these numbers are going. BrandLink probably doesn't get that many hits on their website in an entire month.

UPDATE 12:05 p.m. CT: I was reading the comments on BrandLink's facebook page and saw where someone had shared my post with Carol, the head of the company. She indicated that she clicked the link, read my post and agrees with what the mistakes were. So at least someone over there seems to get it. She has emailed Jenny to apologize and let her know that action will be taken. Carol has elected to keep that action private and internal, as is her right.