Why do so many PR and journalist bloggers criticise press releases and pitches they receive without naming the company?
What’s the point?
The only way that company is going to improve is if they know that they’re being criticised. The second these PRs are named is the second they’ll take serious steps to be better at what they do.
People don’t intentionally go out to do bad work, many simply don't realise they are doing something wrong. I’m going to use the latest posts at GettingInk as an example, but this could be applied to many more.
As for confidentiality, well, these PR agencies want this news out in the public sphere anyway right?
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We don’t name and shame because it’s pointless.
If I name and shame PRs on the Getting Ink blog, they're pissed off, and don’t pitch again. Their AM is pissed off because they should have checked the pitch and didn’t. The AD is pissed off because the client might see the post.
Ultimately, this hurts me – I rely on good PRs to take the time to pitch me stories, features and case studies that I can turn into articles. If I’m taking pot shots, my job gets a lot harder.
Plus, I’m not even convinced it would work. Nobody sends out a stupid email knowing it’s stupid but figuring, hey, nobody is going to know about it.
Instead, we try and provide PRs with examples of good and poor practice, and suggesting better ways of doing this stuff.
From talking to PRs at the:101's training events, I know they find it helpful having concrete examples, something they can show to a client or manager and say “hacks really don’t like it when we do that”.
Oh, and something that often gets overlooked is the fact that stupid emails aren’t the end of the world for hacks. We might laugh, we might get irritated, we might forward them to our friends for mutual amusement. But nothing fatal.
But really, the PRs are losing out because their pitches aren’t being fully considered because they're not delivering what hacks look for. End result? The clients miss out on coverage. That’s gotta hurt more than some random journo saying they didn’t like your email, hasn’t it?
That's interesting. Do you think then that naming and shaming bad PRs will scare away the good PRs? Because otherwise surely you will just receive less pitches from bad PRs which might not be of much value to you anyway.
I know if I was named for sending a terrible pitch/press release I would spend much more time to get it right with that journalist in the future. Providing PRs with positive examples is great, and we appreciate it, but i've also felt there needs to be a kick up the ass to persuade PRs to follow said advice.
Stupid e-mails aren't the end of the world for sure, but every single one degrades the entire PR profession amongst journalists and makes our job just that little bit harder in the future.
Hmm.
Having read a lot of PR blogs over the last year, I think an awful lot of PR types feel very differently to you - and don't like it one bit when hacks criticise what they see as poor practice - just look at some of the vitriolic comments on Charles' now infamous Die, PR, Die post and TWL.
You might try and work things out, but a lot of PRs would either not pitch again, or just post some incredibly obnoxious and personal comments on TWL (Chris Green, anyone?)
you also might be interested in this debate from Getting Ink a while back on the issue of naming and shaming.
http://gettingink.typepad.com/getting_ink/2006/10/naming_and_sham.html#comments
Hi Richard,
I have to say I don't think that this system would work tremendously well. There's a large difference between taking someone aside and having a quiet word to correct a mistake and publicly humiliating them by posting the details on the web.
It's rude, humiliating and can only bring out the very worst in people.
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