If the pitch makes you want to wash yourself after writing it, don’t send it.
Tip #160: All work and no booze…
A CES tip: Don’t invite me to your daytime press conference and not to your big evening party. What, you thought I didn’t know about the party? I know.
Filed under Relationships
Tip #158: Homeless nerds
If you want someone to actually wear your company’s swag T-shirt, donate it to a Salvation Army or give it to a homeless person.
I already have a ton of vendor T-shirts that I’ll never wear, clothing for a lifetime of painting projects I’ll never get to. While I appreciate the offer of the T-shirt advertising your company or product, I’d feel better knowing it was going to someone who could really use it.
Happy holidays!
Filed under Compassion
Tip #157: This is not the movie I thought it was
You know when you see a preview for a movie, and then later you go see the movie, and it’s nothing like the preview? You know how annoying that is?
Don’t do that with your product.
Especially don’t have a demo video on your Web service with a concrete example of how your product works that can be instantly verified by a casual visitor to be completely different from how your product behaves for real.
At left, a frame from the demo video hosted on the product's home page, showing the "power words" you get when you search for "House pet." At right, the power words you actually get.
Filed under Common sense
Pro PR Tip #156: Out of print
I can forgive you for saying that I’m a freelance writer in your phone message to me. I have been at times in my career. But, “I understand you freelance for Byte,” is beyond amateur. I last wrote for Byte (when I was editor-in-chief — that’s different from a freelancer) in 1996. Cision can’t be that wrong. Byte isn’t even published anymore! I hope you know your clients better than your PR targets.
Filed under Common sense, Phone
Pro PR Tip #155: Don’t ask, don’t tell
If you don’t ask me if I want to hear your pitch before you start pitching, then the answer to the unasked question is, “No.”
(Yes, I spent time this week in the demonstrator pavilion at the Demo conference.)
Filed under Common sense, Meetings
Pro PR Tip #154: Why 2010 will be like 1984
Just got this doubleplusgood announcement from Apple regarding the company’s press conference tomorrow (September 1):
Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at www.apple.com.
Emphasis mine. Yep, that’s “open” in Apple’s world: It only applies to Apple hardware. Even Safari on a Windows computer doesn’t qualify.
As a PR stunt, it is brilliant. If nothing else it’ll give people a reason to run Safari on their Macs tomorrow. (I haven’t used the app myself in months.) And it’s a great demo for HTML 5.
But as worded, it reads Orwellian. This is shaping up to be a great case study in how companies lose the trust of the people who cover them. You get a free pass on a certain amount of doublespeak. Apple’s running way beyond that. It’s not an example worth emulating.
(By the way, I’ll be covering the Apple announcement on CNET Live, starting at 9:45 a.m. Pacific time.)
Filed under Bad ideas
Tip #153: No dead rodents, please
At least it has a hair net on it already.
If you’re going to send marketing swag, it would be good to send something that doesn’t make the receiver recoil in horror and fling the swag across the room in disgust.
I refer to the mullet wig I recently got from a type foundry. Before I remembered that the company had previously sent me an empty Styrofoam head form to put the wig on, I honestly thought it was a furry creature that had expired in transit.
See also: Tip #54: Protection
Filed under Bad ideas
Tip #152: You and what army?
To learn about a new company or product, the only person I really want to talk to is the CEO. It may just be me, but I like to focus on just one person during a pitch. So if the CEO is at the meeting, the presence of the COO, and the VP of something-or-other, and the PR flack too is simply distracting. One chaperone should be enough.
See also, Tip #32, Hush, Now.
Filed under Meetings
Rafe
Pro PR Tips 