Is pitching easier or harder than it used to be?

Most people believe that it’s harder than ever to pitch media. I understand why they think that, but an experience I had last week crystallized how I see it differently.

It’s true that many traditional media outlets have shed staffers – especially local TV. Those that remain are doing the work that two or three used to do. At the same time, the proliferation of PR people and the ease of sending email means this smaller pool of reporters is getting drowned by the PR fire hose daily.

So I get that – pitching is tough. But I don’t think most people stop and really think about how it really used to be.

Last week an old friend texted me a picture of an open folder he found in a filing cabinet where I used to work. In the folder were the materials I had used for a national media campaign in 2003. I remember it – I was fortunate to land the Washington Post and National Geographic, among others. The crazy thing about the folder was that it contained . . . faxes.

Yes, even in 2003, many of the top-tier media (at least the ones I was pitching) still didn’t reliably use email. To get their attention, you had to actually CALL them and give them enough reasons to get and walk over to the fax machine to check out the additional details you were about to send them. And to even know who to target, you had to actually read their stuff regularly, because the online archives weren’t reliable enough (at all outlets) to pull up their recent work before a particular pitch.

Does that really sound easier than today? Yes, we’ve nearly ruined email as a channel for pitching by overdoing it. But journalists are still more likely to actually check it than they were the communal fax machine.

Now, instead of skimming five papers daily like I used to (that was way fewer than many peers), we can use search engines to quickly find the influencer for whom our topic is the most relevant. And there are now so many more platforms to connect with them on! It used to be just the phone. But now we can find them where they like to be – whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or the comments section of their blog. And swap little messages about shared interests to become familiar to them before we reach out.

My candid feeling is that pitching is actually easier now than ever before. But most PR pros don’t actually take advantage of the new avenues for success. They don’t admit it, but almost everybody in this business simply defaults back to the same essential process their predecessors used in the early ‘00s: blast out a news release to a big list of media and hope for a response. The only innovation is that today’s generic pitchers use email instead of blast-fax software.

That’s why you’re more valuable to your organization than you realize. Because you’re still reading, I know that you actually care about the nuances and fine details of the pitching process. Those additional elements “beyond the blast” that set you apart in the eyes of your target influencers.

YOU actually research a narrowly targeted set of influencers. You use social media and other platforms to get noticed well before you need to ask for coverage. You don’t send email blasts – your pitches are clearly customized for each valuable recipient.

As you fine-tune that expertise and stay current on evolving best practices, pitching gets easier. Don’t get me wrong – it will never get straight-up EASY. But it will get easier for you than it used to be. And your placements will increase and you’ll earn more autonomy to pursue media relations the way you know works best.

So you’ll be free to incorporate the next innovation that we don’t even know about. And someday someone will send you a screen shot of an email pitch you once sent, and you’ll think, “How quaint.” 🙂

P.S. Some have asked about options now that the New York workshop has sold out. We are working to schedule the next one in spring 2018. As soon as it’s nailed down, this web site will have the details and will accept registrations.