The best-written pitch is the one that works. Your style is “good” when it leads to a hit. That said, there are all too many ways to go wrong. Our subscribers continually say that the crickets are chirping like never before. Is your pitch as good as it can be?
Picture this. It’s Sunday morning. You have no plans. You roll out of bed and grab a cup of coffee. Now… what’s in your other hand? For most of us these days, the answer is “my phone.” But are you scrolling Instagram with that time? Or –- alternatively -– are you reading a magazine?
TechCrunch Extra Crunch this week posted a pair of articles containing admonishment and advice for tech PR pros. The top portion of the posts does appear for free in regular TechCrunch. The full text is available only to TC EC subscribers. We hereby excerpt (in fair-use fashion) what our readers most need to know.
Invest 15 minutes in last week’s LA Times profile of Huawei and you’ll appreciate the power of candor. The Chinese telecom giant had every reason to expect a grilling from legendary journalist Norman Pearlstine and his team. Instead, Huawei received fair treatment in context useful for both parties.
RSA Conference (RSAC) has come and gone, and hopefully the email flow has finally stopped. As usual, the conference and its associated 300 or so emails shows what the best and worst PR practices are. This time I asked Sam if I could share with you my analysis of these inquiries, in the hope that we (we being the trade press) can work better with you.
SWMS subscriber Amanda Orr writes:
Thank you for bringing this topic to the light in Media Survey, Sam, as it’s been on my professional mind for quite some time. Anecdotally, about three quarters of my clients over the past two to three years have had “social good” corporate missions.
I’ve previously written about managing difficult clients and maintaining profitability – two daily challenges in the life of PR leadership. While these are critical to your everyday role, there’s another key factor that will help or hurt you while juggling the work: your team.
It’s time to address the big bad B word: Budget. Oh, and that O word, too: Overservice. Budgets are one of the most important aspects of any client/agency relationship: they help set the basis for the scope, and without the dollars, an agency can’t operate.
SWMS contributing editor Lindsay Ciulla writes: Welcome to a new series focused on agency management concerns. Each month we’ll share a new post dedicated to issues and concerns that senior staff deal with on a regular basis.
So, you pre-briefed a group of reporters on an upcoming announcement, with the expectation that they’re going to post a story shortly after your embargo lifts. You and the client worked closely together to make sure the reporter had all assets they’d need for a story.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
The publications in question are UK-based. Still, the author’s observations about Google bode ill for US publishers as well.
Biz now covers “the intersection of money and Silicon Valley” for the Bloomberg Wealth section (not Brad Stone‘s team).
Twitter blew up yesterday about the WSJ’s suggestion that SVB’s problems may have stemmed from “diversity demands.” Absolutely no one should be surprised by this claim. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch recently installed Emma Tucker as EIC, a Murdoch loyalist brought in to lead WSJ’s coverage of the 2024 elections. Says The Guardian: “Tucker will find herself having to work out how to cover a third presidential run by Donald Trump. Murdoch has… cooled on the former president and is warming to Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who is expected to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination.”
So prepare for an onslaught of woke this and woke that from the WSJ, a publication that isn’t what it used to be, no matter how much we wish it otherwise.
Sean Michael Kerner now writes for SdXCentral… watch for his copy soon.
Owner Axel Springer must be nervous. Not a good signal from one the world’s most successful publishers. We’ll do the best we can to audit who left. Axios’s Sara Fischer broke the story.
Folks are losing their minds. It’ll come back but it won’t be free, that’s for sure.
