By Samantha Wannemacher
As PR professionals, we aspire for the “perfect pitch,” a story idea for a journalist so well written, the reporter’s attention is instantly captured and a story including a client is the end result. A perfect pitch is the appropriate balance of concise but detailed, creative but not corny, something that grabs interest but doesn’t sound salesy – it’s a tall order.
Which is why I was very intrigued to read about the winners of this year’s “Pogue Perfect Pitch Award.” This award, given by David Pogue, a journalist and 10-year personal technology columnist at The New York Times, is presented to the company or PR practitioner who sent what he considers to be the best product pitch all year. (Keep in mind, as a NYT journalist, it’s common for Pogue to receive fifty-plus e-mail pitches a day.)
Pogue’s awards went to a software company called CodeWeavers, which created a funny and creative YouTube video to pitch their new computer program; and a PR representative from Nikon, who sent David a “Dear John” love letter after David had professed his love for a camera made by Nikon competitor Canon in one of his blog posts.
From what I can tell, David really hit the nail on the head in his selections. These pitches were engaging, creative, and genuinely enjoyable to read (or watch, in the case of CodeWeavers).
This doesn’t automatically mean it would be appropriate for any PR team to rush out and create a YouTube video for, say, a B2B client and expect reporters to “Ohh” and “Ahh.” The reason the CodeWeavers video was so effective was its creativity in portraying a funny and entertaining metaphor for a specific product. I’m not sure the same could be said of a YouTube video meant to portray the success a B2B company had implementing a corporate wellness program for its employees over the course of a year.
Nonetheless, Pogue’s “Perfect Pitch” selections triggered three key lessons for me to remember in today’s PR world:
- Social media is here for us to use to our advantage. Sometimes, we become so focused on helping clients use social media to build their own businesses; we forget that social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr are also a great way to reach journalists.
- It’s OK to be creative and/or off-beat. Lately, every article I read offering advice on how to reach journalists stresses keeping it short, keeping it simple, getting to the point, etc. Of course these tips are important when it comes to catching (and keeping) the attention of extremely busy and overloaded journalists, but look at the Nikon “love letter.” If a pitch is creative and well-written, any one of us would keep reading. Done well, this is a great way to provide journalists a refreshing break from the monotony of other PR pitches.
- As important as it is to create the “perfect pitch,” it’s just as important to know your audience. As Pogue writes at the end of his article, “Of course, a great pitch doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to win media coverage. Frequently, I write the PR person back to say, ‘Unfortunately, that’s a little bit out of my territory, but I have to say – what a great pitch!’ ” Sure the affirmation on a job well done is nice, but you need to really know the journalists you’re pitching. It’s not as simple as just knowing their title and beat; you must read the articles they write, learn the issues they report on and the perspective they bring to ensure that what you’re pitching (even if it is packaged beautifully) is something they would write about.
So thank you, David Pogue, for creating these awards and providing some journalist perspective on what you like to see in a PR pitch. I’ll be in touch. 🙂
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Samantha Wannemacher is an account executive for WordWrite Communications
