Media Relations Tip #2: Awards Are Not Stories
This morning’s pile of email pitches (27) included this news release:
August 21st, 2007 – [company], a leader in comparison shopping for consumer [category] products, today announced that it received the [awards] Bronze Award. The awards handed out twice annually are organized by the [association], a national clearinghouse for [category] information programs and materials.
A nation wide panel of [industry] information and Internet experts judge entries based on content, format, success in reaching the targeted audience and overall quality. This awards program, the most comprehensive of its kind, recognizes the best consumer [category] information materials and programs from organizations throughout the United States and the awards are considered the “seal of approval” for [category] information on the web.
”[company] is honored to receive the [award] Award,” comments [name], President and CEO, [company]. “Overall our objective is to be the #1 advocate for the consumer when it comes to helping them with their on-line [category] product needs. This award provides validation from the [category] Industry that we are a leader in providing accurate, fair [category] product information to the consumer, which is why more and more US consumers are relying on [company] to show them where to buy [company] products online with confidence.”
Where do I begin?
- Once again, no greeting to me or indication from the p.r. person (whom I’ve met in person a couple of times and otherwise have a high regard for) as to why I should be interested in this story.
- Unless you’ve won an Oscar or Pulitzer, winning an award is not a news story. And even then, it’s got to have an interesting story. There are far too many organizations giving awards out and it’s just a cheap excuse for generating a news release. In the same category as hiring a polling firm to do a survey for you, then publishing the (favourable) results. Whenever I see either, I assume immediately something is actually wrong at the company, because clearly they don’t have any thing newsworthy to say, and are just trying to get back into the media.
- Worse of all, this news release contains the dreaded WAPT (”We are pleased to”) quote. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass that your President is proud, happy, delighted, honoured, or pleased that your firm did something. That’s his job to. It’s not surprising. The quote in this particular release (in italics, above) says absolutely nothing. You could apply the quote to any company. It’s worse than a generic mission statement. I mean really, when was the last time you saw the New York Times publish that kind off quote? Just leave it out and give me something I can actually work with.
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Media Relations tips (from the other side)
I get a lot of pitches from media relations folks. Most of them, I’m sorry to report, end up in the trash. I thought I’d do a short series of blog postings explaining why some pitches end up in the trash.Here’s what I received this morning:
Good morning,Today [camera maker] announces it has added significantly to its [brand name] line with six new cameras, including the [model] (replacing the [model]) and the new [model].Other cameras include [model] and more of the popular A-series cameras.
For your convenience I have included links to each of the releases below, but please feel free to contact me for the original documents or for more product information.
Best, [name]
Okay, this one has two primary problems with it:
- It’s clearly a “blasted” pitch, which means the exact same email has been sent to other reporters, without any thought to their beat or anything. Even a simple “Hi Tod” at the start would help me think even a bit of thought was put into it. But really, the pitches that grab my attention quickly have a bit of personalization. For instance: “Hi Tod, I know you’ve done a few stories on digital cameras recently, so I thought you’d appreciate this.”
- There’s no compelling story here. You’ve added new models. Big deal. Companies add products every hour. Tell me about something REVOLUTIONARY in the product. Does one camera have something really cool that no other digital camera on the market has? Is it the first digital camera that can also make coffee? If there’s no compelling story (sorry, but going from 10 megapixels to 12 megapixels is not a story) then don’t send me the pitch at all.
Cyber-Chondriacs
Maybe you’ve had this experience. You feel achey one day, a little bit sick. And so you make a quick appointment — with Dr. Google. If you find yourself turning to the Internet to try to diagnose your ailments, you’re not alone. The CBC’s technology columnist Tod Maffin has more on this growing trend of “cyberchondriacs.”
Another reason to love Apple
Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of extended warranty plan. Most times, they’re just a cash grab. Future Shop is the worst of them. Even if you tell them you really don’t want “the speech,” they give it to you anyway, how it’s really worth it, you’ll regret not getting it, his cousin’s friend Charlie didn’t get an extended warranty for his DVD player and now he’s dead.
Even London Drugs (where I do most of my electronics shopping because, unlike the staff at Future Shop, they actually seem to know what they’re talking about) offered me an extended warranty on a $12 citrus juicer. Come on.
But I always get Apple’s version, which they call AppleCare. I get it because they have a toll-free line with great hours and I’ve never had to wait longer than two minutes to speak to an actual person, in Canada, who knows what they’re talking about.
So when my new MacBook Pro’s power cable started fraying at the end and losing power, I called Apple and asked for help.
That was yesterday afternoon.
Today, not even a day later, a courier arrived with a brand new power cable. It also had easy instructions to send back the damaged cable to Apple at their cost.
‘Shaw keeps bouncing us around dial without warning or explanation’: OUTtv
OUTtv’s chief operating officer Brad Danks read my earlier story about Shaw Television’s offensive placement of OUTtv between porn channels and he contacted me to add additional information:
1) OUTtv does not currently carry any “Adult” content. OUTtv voluntarily adheres to the adult content guidelines set by the Ontario Film Board which is the only body in Canada that sets such guidelines. Shaw has been made aware of these programming changes.
OUTtv’s programming is primarily dramatic television including British hit shows like “Sugar Rush” and coming this fall “Bad Girls”, “Mile High” and “The Graham Norton Effect”.
2) Shaw has changed OUTtv’s channel placement twice in the last 18 months. Originally OUTtv was appropriately placed at Channel 100, then to Channel 200 and now to Channel 370. At no time was OUTtv advised in advance of these changes as required by the CRTC. Furthermore Shaw did not contact OUTtv at anytime prior to or after these placement changes to advise that it had issues relating to Adult Content on OUTtv. To date Shaw has not provided any explanation for the placement changes.
Shaw was asked in writing to return OUTtv to it’s [sic] original placement. Shaw has formally refused without providing any explanation.
Shaw has not returned my calls for comment.
Is Shaw Cablevision homophobic?
It being Pride Week here in Vancouver, I thought I’d tune into OUTtv, the GLB lifestyle specialty channel, to see if they were doing any special coverage. (After all, why go outside to see a parade when you can stay indoors and watch it on TV! {sigh} )
But I couldn’t find OUTtv on my Shaw channel guide. I like supporting upstart Canadian broadcasters, so I called Shaw to add it to my package. Turns out, I already had it.
That’s it, buried way up in the 300s, right between the porn pay-per-view, Hustler, and Playboy. Literally, it has three porn channels above it and three below it.
Huh?!
For the record, OUTtv doesn’t play any porn movies. Not even the soft-focus romantic stuff. I checked the next five days of listings, and the raciest I could see was a newscast in the wee hours where men, far better endowed than I, disrobe while delivering the news. No, really.
Compare that to Showcase, which is on basic cable, which tonight is showing “Emmanuelle” described as a saucy “series following her amorour adventures.”
This probably has a lot to do with Shaw Cable’s Calgary-based CEO, Jim Shaw. When the now-defunct PrideVision launched in 2001, Shaw refused to carry a preview of it on his network. Strange, considering he had no problem with the channel SexTV!
The CRTC later forced him to carry it.
Now, he’s booted the embarassingly tame OUTtv to the dirty-section of the dial, where nobody will see it. (OUTtv was actually a spin-off of PrideVision. The tame lifestyle stuff went to OUTtv; the harder stuff went to a pay-only specialty channel.)
Considering this is “Pride Week,” I think everyone should blog this and apply some pressure. There’s no reason why Shaw Cablevision should be ghettoizing this channel.
UPDATE: OUTtv says Shaw’s been bouncing them around the channel lineup forever.
I have a call into Shaw’s president (the only person allowed to speak on behalf of the company — weird) for comment. So far, nobody’s called me back.
NowPublic’s “crowd-sourcing” fails the bridge-collapse test
First, let me say this. I know the folks at NowPublic. I like them. They’re cool. And I’m always happy when a local company becomes successful.
But I’ve never quite been able to see the value in their coverage, at least from the end-user point of view. And coverage of yesterday’s Minnesota bridge collapse cemented that opinion. NowPublic uses breaking-news stories like the collapse as an example of how this kind of “crowd-sourcing” can really enhance and compliment mainstream media (MSM) coverage.
But even hours after news of the bridge collapse was all over the cable news networks, NowPublic’s story of the collapse had only two contributors to the story (one of whom is actually an employee of NowPublic).
Their “coverage” consisted of an excerpt from a MSM article, five screen captures from CNN, and two maps. This, again, was hours after the story broke.
Today, NowPublic’s coverage is not much deeper.
It still shows only an abstract, an excerpt from a newspaper article, and links to 184 random photos of the bridge and surrounding area.
Even Flickr has a number of tags already started around the bridge collecting hundreds of photos, such as 35wbridge, collapse, bridgecollapse, and more.
Meanwhile, the MSM was, I thought, much more effective. CNN’s iReport had an eyewitness on the phone and his photos on the air nearly right away after he uploaded the pics to CNN. More than 300 people have uploaded content to them. And CNN now has a collection of user-submitted bridge-collapse videos online. I couldn’t find a single video on NowPublic’s site.
Today is, coincidentally, the first anniversary of CNN’s iReport.
I still don’t understand what benefit people get by uploading to NowPublic vs to CNN or CBC or CTV or [insert MSM organization here]. When I asked NowPublic co-founder Michael Tippett about that last week (watch video here), I found his answer to be a bit lacking:
Tod: “So the idea is that someone sees something happen and you want them to upload it to NowPublic?”
Michael: “Right.”
Tod: “How then do you compete against the CNNs and the CBCs and the CTVs of the world who [tell their audience] ‘When a big news event happens, upload it to us.‘ ”
Michael: “In many cases we work with those news organizations [like the Associated Press] where we’re basically providing them with eyewitness reports…. There are cases where people will send to us because they feel like they have a greater chance of getting their side of the story told.”
Photo by Roland Tanglao
He’s right, but only on a technicality. While NowPublic would likely accept a lot more material that flows in, it does so only because its medium is infinite. But realistically, if you want your “story told” you want it to reach as many people as possible. And even regional news operations can provide more eyeballs than NowPublic.
That might change. Hell, NowPublic one day might indeed become, as Tippett says is his goal, to become “the biggest news organization in the world.”
But until their web site provides more value than an excerpt and some photos I can see in countless locations all over the web, those eyeballs will stay glued to mainstream media.
Disclosure: I do work for the CBC, a mainstream media organization.
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