The Dupe

This is so school boy, it feels wrong of me to impart it as knowledge. But some ruthless PRs will lie in order to get a journalist in front of a client. One PR called me with news that her client – perhaps the dullest of all the dull industry steering group organisations – had some news. I went across town to the PR HQ, I was sat down in front of a panel of telecoms engineers. The panel of engineers were almost as non-plussed as I as to why he I there. There was no news, this was to be a ‘catch up’. Not only was it a massive waste of time. It was also pretty embarrassing.

Sadly, the agency in question hasn’t learnt. A few weeks ago, another colleague of mine announced he was off to see the same organisation. Unfortunately, for said colleague he hadn’t been warned in time about my pointless cross town mission. He returned about three hours later with the same sorry tale.

There is about as much chance of me, the Bull, our colleague or anyone else we talk to meeting up with that organisation as there is of me, the Bull, our colleague or anyone else we talk to deciding that ‘yes, maybe a trip to South Wales on a Friday afternoon to see a phone recycling plant is a good idea’.

Bullshit Bingo #1 – Agnostic

The word agnostic is often attached to a software or hardware product, or indeed an organisation, to mean that the software or hardware product, or organisation is open, that is (to use another bullshit bingo word) non-proprietary

For record, here’s the generally accepted definition of agnostic:

A person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

There is a word that will suffice, though. A word that was invented to convey the meaning people using agnostic in this context wish to convey. The word is: Neutral.

So don't use agnostic. You might as well use Mauve, or Gangly... or Twat.

Forward Features lists

One of the tech journo industry’s leading lights recently forwarded this email to me on the subject of Forward Features lists…he is intending to put it on his magazine’s blog. It makes excellent Bad PR reading.

----- Original Message -----
From: A.N. Esteemededitor
To: All his colleagues
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 1:54 PM
Subject: A Writer Rants

I finally got round to writing a rant to put on the blog bit of he website as a semi-serious answer to the plague of calls. If nothing else, it's something that I can point them at with an automated email response.

Bit worried that it might be a tad over the top, and long. Any thoughts, or should I publish and be damned?

Features synopses, and why they are hard to come by ...

The single most common request - Top of the FAQs - we get at Our Magazine is from PR people looking for synopses based on the Forward Features list.

The single most common answer isn't really fit even for the web, so I thought it might make some sense to set out some of the reasons that it's not a good question: for a start it hasn't got a single answer.

Firstly, magazine forward features lists were historically created for the advertising and sales side of the operation. Editors hate them: at best they are done out of a grudging recognition that the sales people have to eat (and if they don't eventually we all starve); at worst they are done in a spirit of parody.. One of my predecessors calls it the Forward Features Lies, and he has a point.

The simple fact is that no journalist has any idea what they are going to be writing about in a year's time in anything other than a vague way. Sure, BBC Good Food Magazine <http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/magazine/good-food/> will be doing something on al fresco dining in its July issue; but other than trade shows and conferences, us trade 'n' tech hacks haven't got much each month.

Which brings us to the second aspect of the Forward Features list, which is its role in the media pack. Writing down all the things that a mag might possibly cover that advertisers and subscribers might be interested in - why else put them in the media pack? - is a way of setting out the stall.

The US phrase "Editorial Calendar" adds another twist here, as some people seem to assume that those subjects only get covered if they are mentioned in the FFL - sorry, I even got fed up typing it's name - and we have conversations along the lines of "I see you're writing about Blah in November ..." to which the only answer can be, "We're Blah Monthly. We write about Blah every issue."

Thirdly, from a writer's point of view, there really is no such thing as a feature: they are all just pieces. Different lengths, different deadlines, different subjects - that's all. The basic thing is to talk to people - on the phone, in the pub, whatever - and write down what they say. Then the next time you talk to someone about that subject, you have a little more knowledge and the story grows, especially if there is any discrepancy between them. And so it goes.

So when people ask for a synopsis for a particular feature, it's pretty hard to answer honestly without being patronising and rude - and quite frankly, if you phone up looking for a synopsis of a feature called something like Vienna: A Guide to the City's Irish Pubs and ask "what angle are you taking?" then you'll be lucky to get away with being rudely patronised, even before lunch.

Which brings me to the fourth - and last, for now, point: you don't really care what the angle is anyway - what you want to know is if there is any chance that your client can get a mention in the upcoming supplement on the Irish Bars of Venice, or whatever garbled nonsense has turned up on the various feature compilation services that abound.

The answer to that is simple: does the client have an Irish Bar, in Vienna?
Really? Then you'd better tell us all about it ..

The sneaky bribe

A while back I was approached to do some freelance for an incredibly dull industry association that generally gets no coverage. It was very easy and relatively well paid.

For the piece a meeting in my own time was set up with the MD of the organisation. He proceeded to tell me all about the organisation and what a great job it does. He handed me a document and told me to re-write it, but to add some ‘punch’.

Not only did they get me to do some work (albeit of questionable value) but now I understand how the organisation is run and who the key players are. This would have been excellent PR, guaranteed to at least get the firm on my radar, but for the fact that following the assignment the PR proceeded to hound me with press releases.

They were way too eager after the bribe!

Operation Backhander is a dangerous game. We know that parties, gifts and freelance work can help build a relationship, but what we had here was not just bribery it was a case of emotional guilt-based blackmail. The stunt (once I recognised it for what it was) backfired and I no longer open their press releases. It’s a bit like telling a girl you fancied for ages that you’re hung like a horse to get her to come home with you. If it works, and you're not, she’ll never fall for it again.

I hope I'm in Business Class

Whenever a journo gets a press invite it is a moderately exciting event. After all it is better to turn something down than to have never been invited in the first place. and now and again, it may even be an invite worth accepting - such as a free trip to Bangkok.

But by far the most irritating invite is the utterly pointless one, such as below:

The XXXX company would like to invite you and your colleagues to visit its booth at the exhibition that will take place within the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 on July 7-10, 2008 in............Houston, TX, US.

Texas??? I've been invited to Texas?? Cool. Only I've scoured the email from top to bottom and still can't find my flight itinerary or hotel details. And do they know I'm a vegetarian? And how mnay colleagues shall I bring? And how will they be able to sort all of this out considering the fact that ... THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW MY FECKING NAME!!!

Still at least they've followed up the invitation with some info about their latest product and given it the inspiring but soul-bearingly honest title of

Press-release

24 June 2008, XXXXX -- The XXX company is going to participate in the exhibition that will take place within the XXXXX Conference 2008 on July 7-10, 2008 in Houston, TX, US. Its latest advanced management solution for creating various reports on the company's IT infrastructure will be presented there.

Slipped through the cracks

A colleague of mine got this beauty a couple of weeks ago. Pure unadulterated genius....

------ Forwarded Message
From:
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:29:42 -0500
To: ,

Subject: XXXXX XXXXX Forum Release

Hi Journo,

My colleague, A PR was working with you to get the XXXXX
XXXXX Forum release over to you today for the XXXXX XXXXX Show Daily.
Please see the full release below. Sorry this is so late, turns out
Claire went into labor today to give birth to her daughter and this
slipped through the cracks.

I hope it is not too late.

Don't hesitate to contact me with any details.

Thank you,

A PR

Read it yourself

Dear The Finisher (...at least the lazy PR addressed this email, but things soon went down hill)

Herewith I would like to follow up on the media alert that was sent through at the end of May regarding Dnata and Mindpearl. Would it be possible to please let us know via e-mail whether this story was of any interest to you and whether you will be making use of it? It would be greatly appreciated if you could send through feedback within the next day or two?

Should you receive more information or have specific questions please do not hesitate to contact us.


Kind regards,

Firstname Surname


OK – this piece of Bad PR breaks three crucial rules of the Knowledge.

First up, people who use unnecessary words to make themselves sound clever only ever make themselves look stupid.

Second, why did this PR leave it a month before following up? I’ve never heard of either of her clients, how the hell am I going to remember an email from a month ago about two firms I’ve never heard of?

Third, if you read the things you’re trying to get coverage in, you might find out whether your clients got covered.

The Double Whammy

It’s a sad and tragic fact that almost all of the press releases PRs write will go unnoticed. If it makes you feel any better, journalists are all too familiar with rule one of tech press: No one reads it anyway.

However, there is a dirty trick in PR land and it is a trick that we journalists are all quite familiar with. The re-issued press release.

I was recently tasked with the job of writing a feature about location based services. For those of you not familiar with LBS, it’s been around a while, and because of that it can be a bit tedious.

Ordinarily, I would probably delete press releases about this tiresome subject without a second thought. However, since I was writing about the subject, I decided to be professional and follow one up. It wasn’t very exciting, but at least it was half relevant. And, shock horror, I even used some of it in my feature. The news item even went onto our website.

So far, so Good PR. When I received the self same press release over a month later with a shiny new date at the top I figured that maybe not everything that’s getting passed off as news is entirely bone fide. I'll think twice about anything coming from that source.

Links

Along the lines of yesterday's Bad PR I just got this email:

Press Release: ProcServe Launches a Custom Built Electronic Marketplace for NHS

Media Contact:
Firstname Surname
T: +44(0)20 XXXX XXXX
E: Bad.PR@procserve.com
Click here to read further...

No name at the top, a PR I've never heard of from a company I've never heard of punting something completely irrelevant to my publication and a meaningless looking hypertext link to a story. Bad PR.

Attachments

There is no beginning, no middle and defintiely no end to Bad PR. With that in mind, let's get the ball rolling with this piece of Bad PR:

I just received an email from someone I've never heard of saying:

Please find attached the latest press release from mimoOn, mO0608

mimoOn expands team with wireless experts from Nokia’s research center

There followed the PR's name, her company's name and its address.

Does this person seriously think anyone is going to bother opening an attachment without any other detail?