IN THIS ISSUE: October 29, 1999 To Archive Index Press Releases Are A Waste Of Time Why Hype Has No Future On The Internet What's Next Online Prediction: Price Won't Be Important in the Future

PRESS RELEASES ARE A WASTE OF TIME

I've been a publicist for the past 20 years and I'm going to share a trade secret with you: press releases are a colossal waste of time.

I haven't sent out a traditional press release in the last 10 years. But I have placed stories about my clients in The Wall St. Journal, New York Times, ABC News, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and just about any other major media outlet on the planet.

Editors surely don't need me or any other publicist to write their stories. They need me to point them in the direction of a good story, succinctly give them the facts as I see them, the sources I know and then get out of the way so they can write their own stories. I do those things by writing pitch letters, damn good ones.

Here are some tips for writing letters that get read:

SAY WHY YOU ARE WRITING

Begin with your reason for writing, i.e. "I am writing to suggest a story about..." "I'd like to recommend an interview with..." Too many times, the reason for the letter is hidden several paragraphs into the letter. Editors are busy. If you don't give them an immediate reason to keep reading, your audience is over.

EXPLAIN YOUR PREMISE IN NO MORE THAN TWO SENTENCES

Explain what makes your idea newsworthy. Why is this a good person to interview or a good story to cover? Describe your idea's relevance to current events... its connection to or beginning of a trend... its likelihood to interest a broad cross section of the audience.

How would you explain the story pitch to your friend if you were in the elevator on the way out? Would it take you a page and a half worth of words to make your point? Not if you wanted your friend to keep listening. Be equally kind to journalists.

EXPLAIN YOUR STORY IDEA IN ONE OR TWO PARAGRAPHS

Explain how the story would work, what it involves, what role you will play in assisting the reporter.

A journalist friend who told me he gets a three foot stack of snail mail and over 150 emails a day shared this story with me the other day. "Let me tell you about a letter that typifies the ones we journalists never finish reading. I got one the other day that started off by saying "I've been on the Joe Franklin Show, this show, that show, been talked about by so and so, I've also done this and that." The next line was "I'm not a status oriented person." There were about 8 more pages, but I didn't bother to read them. I just laughed, showed the letter around and threw it away."

TIMING CAN BE EVERYTHING

Timing is incredibly important. Your chances improve when you can say "This is a hot topic and I have a great source." Let's say you're an ophthalmologist and the President is going to have eye surgery. You stand a good chance of getting a phone call for your opinion if your email just arrived while the reporter is thinking of whom to call. Your pitch only stands to become a story if it is likely to make a lot of people stop and read or listen. I think of it as the "Hey Martha" factor �editors look for stories that make one say, "hey Martha, look at this!"

WATCH YOUR SUPERLATIVES

Don't make the company or person you are pitching sound hard to believe. S/he probably didn't do whatever you're writing about single-handedly. Describe her actual role. Be very careful with hype words like "first, only, greatest, biggest." Someone almost always did it before, also, as well or as big. Reporters are trained to look for conflict, lies, exaggerations.

LIST TOPICS THE PERSON CAN ADDRESS

Give the top three or four areas of expertise your client can address. Do it in bullet form.

GET IN ALL INTO 350 WORDS OR LESS

Mark Twain said "If I had more time I would have written less." Edit. Edit again. When you are done. Edit again.

Here's another tip. Once you get a reporter interested s/he will ask you for more information. And then you can give her mountains of background you've researched. Because another thing my reporterfriend shared with me is this: most reporters hate to do research.

If your letter is going via email, include a URL where a company fact sheet, management bios, relevant photos and other articles that have been written about the company can be found. Reporters may deny this but I have found that few of them want to be the first to write about a subject. There's a definite pack mentality in play. Understanding it will increase your placements.

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WHY HYPE HAS NO FUTURE ON THE INTERNET

Editorial and advertising content on most sites has merged into an amorphous mass of cloaked hype. But -- halleluliah -- hype is soon to die a long overdue death.

Take a look at Epinions, Accompany, and Deja, which are some of the best of the new class of sites called Reputation Managers. These sites are going to make advertising as we know it completely invalid. Press releases? Who cares! At last, power to the people, in real time.

When you want to buy something you go to one of the reputation managers and look up the product category. There you will see reviews by real people who have experience with the products and the companies selling them.

If, for example, I want to buy portable tape player and I'm thinking of buying a Walkman, I'll look up Sony. And when I see that their customer service is dreadful, that the new Walkman models self-destruct after only a couple of months, and that several people on the site have had bad experiences with the product, I'm certainly going to look at other brands. And in all likelihood, I won't start with Sony on my next search for small electronics.

Now I agree that a good advertising campaign by Sony could get me to think of Sony first. But after that, nothing the company says will matter if real people say the products stink. It won't matter if they use celebrity spokespersons, hot music, great graphics, clever headlines. All of that will be meaningless. And I say good riddance!

To ensure that the opinions of the real people stay honest, visitors to Epinions are invited to rate the credibility of the reviewers so that others can judge who is writing hype or deliberately trying to create a negative impact. Having a publicist enter such a forum to "create a buzz" will simply be impossible.

That is why it is so crucial that companies now understand that marketing needs to relate to the substance of the product and the integrity of the company that sells it.

This new people's tool, made possible by the internet, will give new credence to the age old principle that to be successful you need to find a need and fill it -- give the customer what s/he wants and stand behind your product. What goes around is coming back around again!

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WHAT'S NEXT ONLINE PREDICTION:

Price Won't Be Important In The Future

Business to business auctions are the hottest new B-B category. Powered by software by software from companies like http://www.opensite.com, http://www.moai.com and http://www.tradingdynamics.com these auctions let companies large and small who are seeking widgets form buying groups with other seekers. Before long, I predict that most companies will interface auctioning with their accounting and inventory. As a result, this type of buying will reduce the importance of price because all prices will be just about the same. Companies that can't compete on price will be out of the picture.

So what WILL be important? CUSTOMER SERVICE and RELATIONSHIPS will be the features that will compel companies to move toward binding fixed price contracts!