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
Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
At this time last year, Eric Newcomer and his two podcast co-hosts — Max Child and James Wilsterman — each formed an “AI startup fantasy team” and picked five AI startups to seed their rosters. We’re now in year 2 and it’s time to draft again. The podcasters wonder… which startups do they dump? Which do they add? The player whose startups accumulate the most total value by Nov. 1, 2028 is the winner, so there’s plenty of time to make adjustments. Here’s a link to the AI fantasy team podcast — you may need a password. Not sure.
