Luke Armour – Digital Marketing and Public Relations Observations, Commentary, Frivolity

I read this post and just couldn’t pass up a chance to send it along. Richard Laermer, author of Full Frontal PR and co-author of The Bad Pitch Blog, posted a highly engaging and unique look at pitching, what I would call, fluff. He calls it vapor and I love the way he uses it. My favorite quote is:

Ken will not pay attention because you’ve proven yourself to be a vapor merchant.

Ha, I love it! And that won’t make any sense until you read the post, but you should. Go read it now. It’s a clear cut description of what – I think – is one of the problems with PR these days. This is especially important for those of us about to graduate and be thrust into the field, forced to write releases about the CEO learning to “reply all” and how Ted went from Deputy Manager of Internal Squeaking to Assistant Director of Corporate Hallucinating. And at first, we won’t have a choice, we’re the “new kids,” we ought to just do what we’re told. But as we mature in the business, we may have to do some educating, the student may have to become the master. For the benefit of you, for the benefit of your company, for the benefit of the future of public relations we may have to take a stand and say, “Sir, not only is this not new, it’s not news. Nobody cares.”

And that will be our task, in my opinion. Find aspects of our clients or organizations and MAKE them news. Not empty noxious vapours, but actually turn organizational happenings into news. It can be done, I think, but there’s the rub, eh?

In addition to the Bad Pitch Blog, which posts educational lessons on both how to write pitches and especially how not to write pitches; there is a new blog is on the block. This one is the Good Pitch Blog by Todd Defren. I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but what I have read is informative and worth reading.

So there you have it, two resources on pitching. Now go on, try to learn something out there!

Filed under: PR Lessons Learned, Education, Future of PR, Public Relations |