Pitch, Please: Journalists Sound Off on Media Relations

We missed a week thanks to a beautiful, beautiful thing we call Summer Fridays--but now it's time for more responses to pitches that don't quite hit the mark compiled with the help of our friends at Muck Rack. First the basics: Shannon Molloy of NewsCorp Australia isn't a woman...and he doesn't cover kids' fashion either. Was included on a group email from a PR pitching a baby/toddler fashion range. Bad targeting... but it also began: "Hello ladies!" Sigh. — Shannon Molloy (@sleemol) July 9, 2015 That's still better than "Hi bitches"...or is it? Another painful lesson in basics via Ben Leubsdorf of The Wall Street Journal: if you treat contacts like you don't give a shit, you might expect them to respond in turn. This may be the worst PR pitch of the day. pic.twitter.com/F5vpXFOZVD — Ben Leubsdorf (@BenLeubsdorf) July 8, 2015 Next, we have some honest sympathy for the PR who pitched Nick Halter of the Minneapolis Business Journal. But shouldn't you ask for alternate contacts AFTER he tells you he's not interested? "I'm not sure if there is a better writer I should be reaching out to ..." says PR pitch to me. — Nick Halter (@mspbjHalter) July 2, 2015 It's not all complaints, though! Here's Rob Pegoraro of Yahoo and USA Today noting a pattern of sorts in his anti-Spotify pitches: Good news for Spotify: Third-party PR pitch calls iOS 8.4 a "Spotify killer"--we all know calling product X a "killer" of Y invites doom. — Rob Pegoraro (@robpegoraro) July 7, 2015 Someone got a little too aggressive with the messaging...but it's hard to describe a product and/or angle succinctly, isn't it? Here's one for the 90s music geeks in the audience: Got a PR pitch for a band that sounds like "Dinosaur Jr. meets Neil Young" -- wouldn't "exactly like Built to Spill" be a better short hand? — Brian Heater (@bheater) July 2, 2015 For the record and the lame joke, very few people sound more like Neil Young than Dinosaur Jr. It's one thing to , as Chris Erskine of the L.A. Times reminds us, sometimes things just don't make any sense at all: Just got a PR pitch for National Breastfeeding Week. I think it's because i'm a "the milk glass is always half full" kind of guy — Chris Erskine (@erskinetimes) July 1, 2015 Were we too busy celebrating National Fried Chicken Day to notice? Next from Steven Shankland of CNET gives us a neat reminder that, even when people scoff at pitches, they might be missing the selfie stick forest for the trees: I admit it: I blew off the first PR pitch I got for a selfie stick, years ago. — Stephen Shankland (@stshank) July 2, 2015 This is very serious; over the long weekend we saw a pair of teen girls use their selfie stick for FOUR HOURS straight. They did nothing else the whole time. Kim Zetter of WIRED, who is usually more sympathetic to pitches than your average tech writer, just couldn't quite forgive this one: Winner of this week's totally irrelevant PR pitch: Curt Blakeney of Orca Communications for pitching me a fire-starting tool for BBQs. — Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) July 1, 2015 But was it a drone-powered BBQ tool? Next, from Alex of TechCrunch, we are almost sad to say that we did not hear of any pea-brained pitches tied to the New York Times guacamole scandal of 2015: looking forward to pr pitches offering pea experts and commentary — Alex (@alex) July 1, 2015 Is there still time?! Some things--like peas in guacamole--just can't be sold to most people, no matter how hard you try: Just received a PR pitch offering samples of Sharknado-branded socks. — Brian Fung (@b_fung) July 1, 2015 Finally, we end with an absolutely brilliant pitch via Heidi Moore of Mashable (who is a well-documented fan of one Alexander Hamilton): Shoutout to the PR person wise enough to start his pitch to me with "Today is the anniversary of Hamilton's death. Sorry for your loss." — Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) July 10, 2015 Whatever that pitch involved, we sincerely hope someone earned coverage.

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Pitch, Please: Journalists Sound Off on Media Relations

The week's best responses...to PR pitches.

Patrick Coffee

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