Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 30, 2006

'The next pitch was sent in by Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek. The subject line alone plunges to new depths of media relations sloth. Remember, our analysis is at the end and BOLDED CAPS reflect our anonymization efforts. Subject : FW: text for editor/analyst blast Hi! COMPANY will be announcing two exciting products at the TECHNOLOGY conference in CITY , and we wanted you to be among the first to not only know about them, but we would like the opportuniity to not only disucss them with you but t

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 30, 2006

'Of all the people who wrote me to “get into” Native’s Guide to New York [ [link] ], this one cracked me up the most. 1.) I don’t ask anyone to give me anything to get into the book and I’m fairly convinced they wanted to throw me some freebies. 2.) It just made me think “Oh my. This PR dude did not read my thing. It’s only been out 15 years.” Just like most people who get bad releases in the mail, this one was for a services guide.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 25, 2006

'"I, personally, think outing bad pitchers is exactly what is needed right about now." --Anonymous comment We''re not going to get all Sally Field on you, but the initial response to the Bad Pitch blog tells us we''ve struck a nerve. Sitemeter shows a handful of national media, agencies and Fortune 500 companies are stopping by. National media are sending us some of the bad pitches that they''ve received.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 25, 2006

'Our next bad pitch plays off Richard’s example below and will be known as the UNVITATION , thanks to Seinfeld. We’ll explain why it stinks at the end. Remember, ALL CAPS words in BOLD reflect our edits. -- SUBJECT: PR News Item we welcome u to attend or post this BODY: COMPANY NAME is a public firm in Manhattan specializing in beauty, health fitness and fashion clients worldwide.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 25, 2006

'A friend from a major business mag sends me this badly written and absolutely pointless piece of trash. It made me smile because it reminded me of the days when people would actually get responses from blindly sent e-mails! Ah innocence. How do we count the ways this sucks? First, it has no subject. (The reporter who forwarded it was getting ready to chuck it when he thought of me.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 20, 2006

'It''s only fitting that the Bad Pitch Blog was itself pitched by a public relations person less than eight hours after it was launched. In this case, it was a good pitch from Blake Barbera at the Wet Feet PR Blog. Here it is: -- Subject: CES - pitch analysis Body: Hey there, I came across your new blog through Media Orchard. Not sure if you guys have had the chance to read Sam Whitmore''s analysis of PR pitches he received during CES, but it is worth a look.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 20, 2006

'Welcome to the Bad Pitch blog. We’re tired of the public relations industry taking the blame for a minority of its members that pollute communication channels with bad pitches, poorly written news releases and useless phone calls asking "did you get the release?" So we’re outing the guilty parties in full view of the highly-networked blogosphere. It’s our hope that the Bad Pitch blog will entertain the true victims of this practice, the PR industry, and it will help the guilty parties improve.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 20, 2006

'Send us your bad, long-winded and irrelevant pitch examples to badpitchblog at gmail dot com. Be sure to tell us why you think they stink. We''ll post them and credit the sender based on a first sent, first posted basis. Categories include: bad writing, mass mail, bad beat, and good pitches. Yes, we also want good examples to show the stark contrast between good and bad pitches.

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Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 20, 2006

'The following pitch was so bad, it inspired several bloggers including B.L. Ochman and Colin McKay. It also inspired this blog. Around the same time, another post was discussed by Jim Horton and Shel Holtz. Note to Shel: We agree that fact checking is in order before calling someone out. It''s also why we''ve instituted the Three Strikes rule. More to come on Shel''s self-policing discussion.

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Journalists receive an overwhelming number of press releases daily, making it hard for your news to stand out. While some news is valuable, most is not.

Media

Bad Pitch Blog

JANUARY 20, 2006

'The feed for this site is available via Atom [link] or via RSS [link] I need to pop the hood on this site and fiddle with the html code. I''m looking forward to customizing the home page and adding a blog roll amongst other things. Until then, the URLs above will allow you to add Bad Pitch blog to your newsreader. Enjoy! UPDATE : We''ve been chickletized.

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