Pitches

In a recent PRNewser poll, we asked, "Which Tactic Did You Employ the Last Time You Released Big News?" The results: "Posted on a wire and pitched the release," and "Exclusive with one publication" both came in dead even at 32% each.

21% said "News embargo" and 15% said "Posted on company blog/website and pitched the link." Judging from these results, we have to ask: Are embargoes on the decline?

Just last week agency Waggener Edstrom assembled a panel to discuss the topic of emgargoes, and reporters in attendance were split down the middle between those who defended them and those who hate them. The panel came on the heals of another declaration that embargoes are dead, this time from TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, who has been publicly battling with PR for quite some time.

Skip forward to this week. Waggener Edstrom, the aforementioned agency who set up last week's panel on embargoes had an embargo broken in regards to one of their clients: Microsoft's MSN.com re-design. This led to another uproar and Arrington said he "banned" Waggener from communicating with TechCrunch. What did the agency learn from the experience? "Will we abandon embargos all together: nope. Will we have an even higher bar for use of the tool: you bet," said Jen Houston, global lead of Wag Ed's digital division, Studio D, in a blog post today.

Is Tyra Banks' TV show, "The Tyra Show" desperate to attract views? A press release sent out today has the headline, "International Exclusive: Woman with TWO Vaginas!"

It continues: "Tune in to find out what sex is like for Lauren and what 2 vaginas looks like!" As our colleagues at TVNewser pointed out, "Must be sweeps month." Indeed, it is.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) launched its re-designed website earlier this week, and in conjunction with the re-design also announced today a new advocacy campaign for the PR industry, "The Business Case for Public Relations." PRNewser caught up with PRSA Chair and CEO Michael Cherenson via phone today. He said the campaign is about "recognizing that people are facing a challenging economy and helping PR pros fight the fight, get budget they need, get staff they need and prove their worth."

He also agrees with many in the industry that PR "should be getting more of the pie" when it comes to new opportunities in digital and social media. The industry has to change the way they think about measurement, he said, because "simple metrics of a clip don't cut it anymore. We have to look at how we're changing behavior."

The campaign will include research, practical tools, influencer and media outreach and targeted career development opportunities, according to the PRSA. Some of these services will only be available for free to PRSA members.

Meanwhile, Jack O'Dwyer reports (sub. required), "Registration fees, mostly for PR Society's conference in San Diego Nov. 7-10, were 60% lower than fees for the same nine months in 2008 - $1.1M vs. $2.7M. PRS had a loss from operations of $708,024 vs. a profit of $727,265 in 2008."

If you're looking for marketing around Volkswagen's new GTI car, you'll only be able to find it on the iPhone. And of course, the slew of media coverage the brand has received for launching its latest model only on the iPhone.

Brian Williams, Group Vice President in the Consumer Marketing Practice at MWW Group leads the Volkswagen account. He told PRNewser that with the target audience for this campaign - 21 to 39 year olds - research showed the demographic is very close to their mobile devices. "They are rarely more than five feet away from their phone," he said.

The concept of launching only via iPhone was put together by VW and their mobile agency, AKQA. They asked MWW, "would this stand as a successful launch and do we have a news story here," to which the agency said yes. "No auto company has ever relied solely on a mobile app to launch," Williams said.

As part of the campaign, consumers who play the racing game via the application will be entered to win one of six custom GTI's. Each week VW will announce one award winner, which "helps keep PR alive," said Williams. The six week campaign began with a launch event last week attended by 115 journalists, bloggers and online influencers. Since then, the application has been downloaded more than 700k times and is the number one free application on the App Store. "Media has embraced the idea of a mobile only strategy" Williams said.

That's the question Advertising Age's Michael Bush asks in a story today. By creating their own original content and hosting it online on their own websites and sites like Facebook and Youtube, companies are increasingly going direct to the consumer.

This is in line with a recent survey we highlighted last week that revealed 86% of companies are creating or plan to create original content. Bush cites companies including Best Buy, MasterCard and Proctor and Gamble.

"Sometimes mainstream [media] can't keep up with the needs of the company to get stuff out," said Andrew Foote, senior VP in the digital media practice at Cohn & Wolfe. Foote works on the Mastercard account, which has gone the "low-production route," wrote Bush, citing Flip cam videos being posted directly to Youtube.

Peter Kafka of AllThingsD is right when he said, "...there really are some sleazy marketers out there, so many that letters like this one, which popped into my inbox this morning, don't even raise an eyebrow..." He's referring to an email sent out today to key influencers in the "digital marketing community." Apparently Kafka is one, and so is PRNewser.

The problem is, the email basically attempts to barter freebies at the trade show in exchange for news coverage of said show. It even includes "suggested postings" such as "why you like ad:tech." It's one thing to send this to marketing contacts at companies who may be interested in a sponsorship agreement of some sorts. It's another to send it to journalists and bloggers who likely would be given free entrance anyway, and then ask them for coverage.

We spoke with the person who sent out the email, and won't name them here. They did tell us that they work neither for ad:tech, or Edelman - ad:tech's agency of record last time we checked - but said they are "helping ad:tech with a few specific things."

We point this out not only because it's bad practice, but it seems to be on the rise. The number of emails we receive that are similar to this one have been increasing. View the full pitch after the jump.

continued...

As "all companies become media companies" we're witnessing more and more of them break news on their own sites and blogs. One of the bonuses is that the company controls the message and media that cover the news often link back to the original source. An example from today is LinkedIn announcing 50 million users on their blog. Google also routinely does this.

Ok, so those are large, popular companies, one may say. It won't work for smaller firms. Good point. Although it has worked for smaller firms, such as social agency Attention, who routinely breaks news on their blog.

But, isn't it the job of the internal PR pro or agency to "get placements" one may ask? Yes, but "getting placements" is publicity, which is only one part of PR, and secondly, there is much media relations work to be done after the initial news, whether it breaks on your company's blog or The Wall Street Journal.

Have you had success breaking news on your own site? Let us know.

Clusterstock editor Joseph Weisenthal received an interesting pitch today. The salutation combined his Twitter handle, name and his unofficial title, "blogger." This is just a friendly reminder to get your mail merges working correctly - or better yet - try using them less frequently and write out personal emails to the media.

Huffington Post books editor Amy Hertz published an open letter to the publishing industry yesterday - specifically those in PR and marketing - with some guidelines on how to pitch the recently launched section. She starts off with some clarification, "This is NOT a book review section. Let me say that again, because I know about 72,000 publicists just plotzed because they have no idea what to do other than ask for a review."

So, how do you get into HuffPo books? Blog for the site, engage their readers, pitch two to four months in advance of the release date, and of course develop relationships with editors.

Writes in one reader who works in the marketing department of a major publisher, "She makes good points (pitch accurately, don't spam people, think of creative ways to promote your product) but the tone is so...lecture-y and condescending. And, essentially, she's telling us that we have to create our own content on the site because they're not going to do it."

Microsoft is gearing up for the launch of the latest version of Windows - Windows 7 - which will be made available on October 22nd. As part of the marketing campaign around the launch, the company is promoting "house parties" in which people around the country can host their own parties to celebrate the release. The "house party theme" is not uncommon with large consumer launches such as these. In fact, there is a company - appropriately called House Party - that specializes in just that. However, Microsoft is getting some flack for a video created to promote "house parties." It's posted above - what's your take?

We confirmed with Microsoft as to who produced the video, as the company works with a number of agencies and vendors. A Microsoft spokesperson tells PRNewser, "Microsoft is working with House Party Inc. as part of our activities to celebrate the general availability of Windows 7 on Oct 22nd, including guidance videos for party hosts on ideas for their own parties."

House Party's CEO Kitty Kolding is fine with all of the joking. The video has been viewed more than 800,00 times. "Make fun all you want...Microsoft got an incredible global response, Kolding told the AP.