I'm a web strategist and aspiring know-it-all with a passion for all things digital. I've worked in PR, advertising and not-for profit industries, and now I run a creative agency. These are the things I think about, and am sometimes compelled to write. More...

There are no prostitutes here.

Aug 29 2007

Via Clickable Culture, comes a photo on Flickr that every single PR person needs to read before deciding to pitch bloggers in their next campaign.

Tom Coates, who is a regular dude who blogs at plasticbag.org is sick of getting press releases, and he doesn’t care who knows it.

It really pisses me off that press people consider me an outlet to push their marketing messages. It upsets me that people in the world can look at me and only see ways that they can scavenge some limited advantage through which to push their agendas. They see my personal expression, my unadulterated opinion and they think they can use it as a host for their parasitic bullshit.

Worse still, I’m not sure they understand how revolting I find the whole thing. I’m not sure they get that I don’t consider it part of my life’s mission to carry the messaging they want to distribute. I don’t think they understand that it’s an insult to me for them to think that my voice is so apparently for sale. I find it degrading, patronising, cynical. It makes me want to hurl.

One of the absolute worst things that has ever happened to my blog was an article last year that named plasticbag.org one of the UK’s most influential blogs. I think it was on PRBlogger.com. The amount of crap I received from people who now viewed me as a useful and exploitable commodity put me off writing for months. Longer maybe. Being viewed like a piece of meat by people who wanted somehow to carve off a little of my feeble authenticity. Disgusting.

Anyway, it would be difficult for me to say that getting sent lots of press releases consituted a real invasion of my life, or that it compromised my existence. But it did spoil a pleasure. It did sour a joy. It made me come to dislike one of the things that had been a particular pleasure in my life, and for that I’m furious.

I post this much of it because it’s the most important insight I’ve ever read about pitching bloggers. As an industry, we’re used to pitching the media – business pitching business. Now that blogs are where everyone wants to be, we’re into business pitching private citizens, which is a completely different thing. Imagine if before blogs, big corporations emailed you to say “Hey [NAME] – thought you were a cool guy, so would you mind telling everyone you know about our new dish detergent?” Confusion and anger would abound, but that’s essentially what we’re doing here.

Merlin Mann gets into the discussion as well, practically begging PR people not to contact him. He refuses to post links from PR people and wonders if we’re all developmentally challenged. Ouch. Merlin whores David Allen and GTD like it’s going out of style, but I doubt he does that as a result of a press release. GTD is a community, and Merlin is a vocal member of that community.

“But I pitch blogs the right way,” you exclaim! Maybe you do. Maybe you’re the best darn blog relations professional in the world, but chances are, if you’re pitching regular dudes like Tom on behalf of clients, whether you’re using a SMNR template or a link to YouTube to do it, they think you’re a filthy spammer. And the reality is, if that’s what they think, that’s what you are.

So, what do we do? First, stop pitching bloggers you’ve never talked to just because they’re in your media list. Second, learn to differentiate between personal blogs and news blogs. Third, realize that blog relations is a slow burn, and that it’s very difficult to control where you show up. Create relationships, create community, create linkable content, and participate in conversations genuinely and without being a sleazy PR guy.

People hate PR people because they don’t understand what our job really is, and that’s to create relationships and tell stories. Our collective image is tarnished by the “PR people” who don’t understand that our job is to create relationships and tell stories.

In our collective defense, I will say that the idea of pitching blogs is quite new, and not something that we’ve quite figured out completely. I’m not innocent of pitching bloggers in a way that probably made me look like a filthy spammer… because at the time, nobody really understood how to do it right. We have a lot more insight now, and if you read the comments that follow the Flickr page, you’ll have a whole lot more insight into what bloggers really think of you when you send that release. It’s difficult to resist the urge to jump to the profession’s defense, but the thing is – he’s not wrong. It’s a hard truth that we need to accept and learn from so that we can advise our clients and do our jobs better.

http://www.plasticbag.org/ Tom Coates

Thanks for the kind words and the sensible advice to PR people, but I have to say I’m not sure that people don’t understand that your job is to create relationships and tell stories. In fact I think the real problem is that people think people who are paid money to create relationships and tell positive stories are slightly unscrupulous!
http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

You’re probably right… and some of us are. But most of the PR people I’ve met and exchanged comments with are genuinely good people, who actually believe in what they’re doing. It took me two hours and about three pitchers to convince one of my friends (who’s an engineer) that marketing people aren’t inherently evil, so I doubt I’ll be able to do it in the comments section, but just like any profession, there are people who want to do good, and people who want to get rich, no matter how. Public Relations and Marketing has a lot of power to do good… and I’ve worked with a lot of charities and causes to help them tell their stories better.

We’re paid to provide services to businesses, just like programmers, designers, accountants, etc. The difference is that we’re telling them how to talk to their customers, and the problem is that many of us don’t know how to do that anymore, now that the rules have changed.

I won’t pretend that PR isn’t without its dark side (I recommend reading “Toxic Sludge is Good for You”), but for the most part, it’s people trying to figure out what a brand’s story is and telling to the right people through the right channels.
Dan

I think a good rule of thumb is that if a blog is obviously not commercial – no ads, no paypal, no store, no nothing – then it should not be treated as a commercial enterprise.

Very belatedly.
http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

Dan – I think you’re right, but there’s a fine line. At the same time, if you’ve got someone who is a personal blogger and writing continually about your product or your industry, they would likely appreciate real information directly from a company.

I get pitches to review books on PR sometimes, and I appreciate and respond to those. On the other hand, the releases I get from a publicist in New York promoting her Hip Hop clients make me livid. With PR and with advertising, the key to getting messages through to people is about understanding who they are and providing them with real utility.
Dan

With PR and with advertising, the key to getting messages through to people is about understanding who they are and providing them with real utility.

I realize I’m agreeing with you but splitting hairs here, but so be it. It’s the Internet.

The first step to what you describe is doing a modicum of research prior to putting out said messages. Anyone who did even the first iota of research on Tom Coates, for example, would learn about the dreadful Cillit Bang incident and should probably have decided not to bother the man any further. I found out about it in about five minutes; that level of care and dedication is distressingly absent in many people these days, let alone marketers.

I know you personally and know you’re generally in agreement with this, but I don’t know if the knowledge that you’re in the upper percentiles of both morals and foresight in your chosen field is a comfort or not.
http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

Oh – THAT Dan! I appreciate the compliment, but there are a lot of things at work that I think are causing PR people to suck at pitching. First, the pace that we’re working at is ridiculous because the speed of communications is so fast, and budgets for pitching bloggers are still (I would imagine) fairly small in most cases. In a perfect world, we would have all the time (and billable hours) to do all the research we could, but it rarely works that way. The only solution is to agree upon professional practices and to educate clients about what it really takes to execute an online PR campaign, and not cut corners because they only have a few thousand to work with.

Of course, there will always be shops who take on the underbudget work and cut corners, and it’s those people who will be doing the most harm to the profession.