Good lessons from bad PR pitches – April 2022 edition

The Muck Rack blog gathers ‘em, I break ‘em down.

Catch up on past editions: March, February, January

See a three-year quantitative analysis of journalists’ complaints on Twitter here.

Celebrating two years of these monthly articles – also celebrating a significant decline in the number of complaints about cannabis pitches (but still a thing, see below).

Never automate pitch customization – or you might pitch a weight loss story to a reporter with an eating disorder!

what’s even more wild is that i would never say i “struggle with weight loss” ?? what i HAVE said a million times is that i have an eating disorder :))))

— kelsey weekman (@kelsaywhat) April 1, 2022

What’s happening here is some PR person (props to Kelsey for not naming them) ran a database search for articles or tweets that mentioned some terms related to weight loss or diets. And then set up a blast pitch to everyone who authored one. In hindsight, you can see how a computer might not be able to tell the difference between a dieting tweet/article vs. a vulnerable post dealing with thoughts related to eating disorders. But that’s why you don’t leave your crucial relationship-building work to a computer! These are human beings we’re trying to connect with. They deserve you at least vetting each post that you’re mentioning to make sure it’s actually relevant. Because you don’t get the benefit of hindsight on your next pitch – you won’t think of the unique case where your otherwise harmless pitch could actually be hurtful or offensive.

I just got a PR pitch because of all my experience in reporting on class-action lawsuits. (I never covered this) I asked him which stories specifically he liked the best. 😉 I am not expecting a response.

— Jim 😷 Pavia (@jimpavia) April 5, 2022

This one isn’t offensive, just wrong. I love that Jim is asking for receipts. Not that I’m anywhere close to the pitch volume of the money editor at CNBC, but I’ve started getting blast pitches because of the articles I write for this site. They are all looking for SEO-juicing backlinks to the most random and unrelated of articles. I have a canned reply: “I’m curious why you feel your site would be interesting to my audience of PR professionals?” I’m probably going to give ten bucks to the first person who owns it and replies with “my bad.” So far it’s been 0 for about 100.

You knew this was coming – Tweets about Pitches about The Slap

Finally, a journalist who sees both sides!

And the PR pitches referencing "slap" just won't end. To be fair to comms people, same for the headlines using "slap".

— Julie Bort (@Julie188) March 29, 2022

Virtually every month we’ve got a tweet in here complaining about receiving pitches about some cultural phenomenon that the tweeter thinks is not newsworthy. Except that jillions of other journalists are covering it. Julie acknowledges this negative self-perpetuating cycle and does her part to slow it down.

Boxing odds – actually newsworthy

Inevitable PR pitch this morning pic.twitter.com/oJheFb6z9X

— Tim Baysinger (@tim_bays) March 28, 2022

Real PR pitch: Will Smith is -220 and Chris Rock is +155 in a boxing match, per @BovadaOfficial

— Jeff Cox (@JeffCoxCNBCcom) March 28, 2022

These odds were actually newsworthy for about 30 minutes the morning after. Announced by a well-known oddsmaker in a keen act of newsjacking.

You know it was bad when a gadget reporter feels compelled to join in

I would very much like to be excluded from any and all PR pitches riffing off the Will Smith-Chris Rock fracas.

— Rob Pegoraro (@robpegoraro) March 28, 2022

There can be no sympathetic explanation for this

sometimes my job is exciting storytelling and working with amazing writers and other times my job is deleting the same PR pitch email sent to me 7 different times in the last four hours

— katherine speller (@Kathriller) April 4, 2022

I am begging you pic.twitter.com/geYlwMCBJy

— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan) April 21, 2022

I feel like I understand what’s behind the curtain on media pitching campaigns pretty well, and I can’t conjure any scenario that makes this understandable. Either multiple people on the same team are pitching the same journalists (easily avoided), or one person is clicking “send” and maybe their software isn’t showing that the pitch went out? Or maybe the journalist has multiple email addresses that all forward to the same inbox.

And Dave’s tweet has another layer to it – he’s a climate reporter, but he’s never written a piece with an Earth Day tie. Lots of journalists do tie into the usual time elements associated with their beats, but a meaningful portion of them (see some more below) view such promotional “holidays” as hollow and beneath them. Super easy to tell the difference – just search their past work for the name of the holiday, like “Earth Day.” If you see zero results, don’t send the pitch to Dave. Or rework it so it doesn’t rely on the holiday.

Too many pitches about 4/20

Ah, it's horribly bad PR cannabis pitch season again.

You know, compared to the regular stream of crappy cannabis PR pitches.

— Vaughn “Special Master” Golden (@VaughnEGolden) April 13, 2022

I regret to inform you that Snoop Claus has canceled 4/20 and there is therefore no need to send any more PR pitches pegged to the cannabis holiday.

— Tom Angell 🌳📰ⓥ (@tomangell) April 19, 2022

Cherish the valuable real estate at the top of the pitch

If you must email PR pitches that have nothing to do with what someone writes about, at least try. pic.twitter.com/1ekYw0ZKDJ

— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) April 6, 2022

At first glance I thought this was yet another mail-merge fail, and I thought it was kinda harsh that he didn’t redact the agency that sent it. Then I was like, wait, they put their logo at the top of the pitch? It appears to be a template they use regularly. Not recommended. After the subject line, the first line of your pitch is the most important part. If the initial thing a journalist sees is an unfamiliar logo (for a PR agency, no less), their curiosity about what comes next will drop almost to zero. If you must include your agency name and logo, put it in the signature.

Obligatory mail merge error

Wednesday morning PR pitches coming in hot. pic.twitter.com/FOgC2QHu4c

— Kaitlin Schroeder (@kschroederDDN) April 13, 2022