Clued and clueless

Jeremy Pepper has posted a great interview with US tech journalist Dan Gillmor, probably best known for his seminal work We The Media.

Two comments Dan makes in the interview leapt out at me:

I can reiterate my plea that PR folks focus hard - on the behalf of their clients - on putting anything that would go out to a mailing list of larger than 2 people onto an RSS feed, and making sure that the people who would want to see the information, do see it.

The big issue is helping those journalists find RSS. In a way, email is broken, and people don’t have time to go through the avalanche of email that comes their way. And, it actually wastes people’s time when it’s not relevant to what they focus on.

And this:

We all need to learn to listen. Listening is not the most visible attribute of the traditional media or the PR industry.

All of this is spot on, what I'd call 'clued.' It emphasizes two twin behaviours in far too many PR people that I wish I could see change, right now.

Which leads me to the flip side of 'clued,' which of course is 'clueless.' Here's an example (I feel a rant coming on...).

I've received six press releases by email in the past 10 days, mostly from PR agencies. In all cases, I have no relationship with any of the pitchers, all in the US. In three cases, the emails I received contained Word attachments, one of which was a two-meg file (which immediately got me considering BL Ochman's suggested solution in such cases).

I opened one of the attachments because the text of the email that accompanied it piqued my curiosity (the rest never made it further than a delete click). It wasn't the two-meg file but it did contain lots of graphics. And it was formatted for US paper size, not European A4. So nothing good going for the pitch by this stage.

Such things are the minor irritations, though.

What's worse is that none of these pitches have anything remotely to do with what I'm interested in or write about in my blog. So I doubt any of the pitchers did any kind of research into considering whether I am the right target for their pitches.

And maybe even worse is that some of the emails come with text at the bottom, usually about 2-point size and in light grey, saying to click on a link if I wish to unsubscribe. I never subscribed in the first place!

Hello PR people! Please pay attention and listen!

While I'd prefer to hear from you first as to what you'd like to be telling me about or sending to me (my Skype ID and email address are prominently shown in this blog), I'm still willing to receive unsolicited pitches - because there might just be a gem amongst the junk, you never know. But please at least find out first whether I'm the right audience for you. At least take a look at the 'About' page in this blog.

And if you think I am the right audience for you, fine - but don't ever tell me I can unsubscribe from something I've never subscribed to.

And no attachments!

Thank you.

Comments

[B.L. Ochman]

Of course you are so right, but i often think our open letters are in vain. The vast majority of publicists just don't listen. The open letter to PR people that I posted a while back is at http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2005/02/an_open_letter.asp

I sure got a lot of grief about it from certain publicists. :>)
BL

[Neville Hobson]

When I was writing this post, BL, I did think that maybe the folk who I'm addressing don't actually read blogs. So they won't see the post!

The post you link to on your blog, plus the comments there, are a great snapshot of where many in the PR business remain. And this isn't just about blogs, either - clueless pitching is relentless everywhere, it seems to me.

And I think you're right that posts like yours and mine probably will be in vain. But perhaps a good rant now and again is good for the soul.

[Eric Eggertson]

Your complaint reminds me a bit of the celebrities who complain that people pay so much attention to them. Remember, your stuff gets republished in WebProNews, so it's not that much of a stretch for someone to make some assumptions about your interests that may not entirely match your true interests.

Question: would you rather be ignored, or hassled by people who haven't researched your blog extensively?

;-)