Most people do not know what to ask when hiring a publicist, but a story that came out today clearly illustrated when you know you hired the wrong publicist. A PR firm sent out a mass Constant Contact email to a large group of media professionals. First of all, you should never blanket national media period and certainly not via Constant Contact when you are pitching a story. Meet the Press received the email and called out the PR pitch for being too obvious. He also posted this on twitter and linked it to the PR guy’s Constant Contact pitch email! To make things even worse, a CNN producer for Wolf Blitzer commented on the Tweet thread that he’d just received the exact same pitch at that same exact moment. Keep in mind, that these people have hundreds of thousands of followers on twitter and the PR firm, as well as the account representatives name were on the email that was sent out. Personally, I think someone is going to get fired. What is the lesson learned here? Make sure you ask how your PR firm pitches the media. Your publicist should email producers individually with your story and pitch them according to the subject matter they cover.
Interesting that even though they did what is akin to a cardinal sin, they got a ton of press from it…… What is the saying, Brad press is better than no press… Thoughts?
Well Mike … I don’t know about “Brad” press 🙂 (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but bad press. I couldn’t agree more. I think sometimes bad press is great in the celebrity sense so to speak. When it comes to blasting national famous media personalities via Constant Contact with firm and account rep. name, no. If you have personal relationships with media, you contact them direct or send a text message. I appreciate your response!