Valley PR Blog

Are your pitches met with radio silence?

By Linda VandeVrede on February 27th, 2008 In Best Practices

I’ve been gathering input from my editor friends about why they ignore some of the PR pitches they receive. Has this happened to you: you study a publication, craft a pithy pitch, send it off, only to hear…..nothing? Nada. Zip. Zero.

I checked in with Walt Boyes, the editor of Control magazine. According to Walt, the biggest reasons why pitches don’t receive feedback are that “the pitch was untargeted, poorly targeted, wrongly targeted, or just plain bad and uninteresting. I don’t have time to respond to pitches like that.” He went on to make the comparison that untargeted pitches are like throwing paint at a wall to see what sticks. You make make a pretty pattern, or you may make a mess. “The odds of being the next Jackson Pollock are small.” (Jackson Pollock made a career out of paint splatters).

He also refers to the PR Wall of Shame - those press releases and pitches that should be buried so that they don’t “zombie like” arise and go from client to client.

OK, I think if we’re all honest, we’ve all sent off a pitch or two that wasn’t appropriate or targeted well. I also believe that there are editors who aren’t as diligent as others in seeing the potential of a pitch (they would claim they’re not here to do the research for a PR person), or who can be in some instances downright rude. Walt belongs to the elite class of what I call “gentleman editors” — those who have the technical or industry background for their particular publication or beat, and who are pretty courteous to the PR people who beat down their door. But just as you can’t sweep all PR people into one category, not all editors are immune from criticism. Unfortunately there are editors I’ve come across over the years who were 1) antagonistic by nature or, 2) handling a beat or industry they knew nothing about, but had inherited because of consolidation in the publishing industry.

I receive a number of ill-placed pitches myself. I seem to be on lists somewhere as a large, multi-national PR agency, as I periodically receive emails from communication students in Iowa looking for internships, or from PR measurement vendors offering me free Barnes & Noble certificates to test-drive their software. I also receive emails from financial firms offering me their accounting services. So I get it. In most cases, I try to respond courteously. Maybe it’s because I spent a semester during grad school working for a market research firm in Boston. You don’t know rejection until you do the dialing for data process with the American public.

The PR friends who have privately confessed to me their bewilderment over the radio silence they receive are — to the person — solid, hard-working professionals who wouldn’t send a breathy, ill-placed pitch. So in some regards, this issue leaves me kind of stumped.

Best answers? Well, I’ve got three: 1) Blog - this gets you out there, and by taking on the role of an editor yourself, you can walk in their shoes. You also gain some credibility by entering the blogosphere, since so many of the individuals you are trying to reach are bloggers themselves. 2) Every dog gets one bite — the editor may have too much on his/her plate, or has already covered the topic or angle to their satisfaction for the year, or is irritated that you didn’t take more time to get to know his or her tastes. 3) When and where possible, try to meet with the editors and bloggers in person.

You may still run up against a wall of silence. I think silence is better than rudeness, however. One editor who shall remain nameless (but whose initials are, appropriately…ah - I’ll cut him slack this time, wherever he is now), responded to my first pitch with a most venomous tirade, claiming that I was “duplicit” by suggesting I was new to the industry (I was).

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