Comments on: Fish Where the Fish Aren’t

By: Jin Woo

Jin Woo — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 06:44:09 +0000

It’s actually very discouraging because PR has become so predictable and with littel planning. If you are a security vendor, you wait for hacker to take down a credit card company, issue a survey or try to make a splash that will create buzz taking away from the technology giants at RSA. If you are a consumer product vendor, you try to create buzz by following special holidays and sporting events. And it certainly won’t change in the near future. But it will be very interesting to see the next innovative method that PR pros will latch on to.

By: Todd Defren

Todd Defren — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:38:50 +0000

I think it is all about RELEVANCE and TIMING.

Got a relevant pitch, in tune with the Big Event? Go for it. Just make sure it’s really and truly relevant, i.e., not a “stretch”…

And, Plan In Advance. Don’tcha hate it when clients DO have a relevant story, but don’t give you the fodder until it’s clearly too late? (And then expect miracles, to boot?)

By: Jesse Ciccone

Jesse Ciccone — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:28:33 +0000

Hmmmmm…I applaud the spirit of what you are saying, Todd, but your advice cannot be applied universally. Let’s face it, the media stories about all the ancillary things you mention re: the Super Bowl generally WON’T have “a truly compelling angle.”

I have a client that provides e-commerce applications for online sellers. We’ve been working with them through three ‘holidy shopping seasons’ now and EVERY YEAR the stories are generally the same (what will the online shopping numbers look like, what happened on Cyber Monday, etc.)

Luckily, we’ve got some very RELEVANT insights to offer and have been able to generate some good coverage because of it. Was our “angle” this year unique? In some cases yes, but mostly it was just offering the right information to the right reporters for the stories we knew from experience were going to be written.

So, of course provide useful content in the quieter times. But in the cases of Big News, maybe you only need to be relevant and helpful, not earth-shatteringly unique.

None of this is to advocate cookie-cutter PR and pitching EVER. Even in these ‘low-friction’ times, your pitch needs to be useful and individually targeted. But our job can be hard enough. Let’s take our swings at the easy pitches when we can!