The Art of the Pitch

As the media landscape continues to shrink, the number of pitches sent by waves of publicists to the last remaining reporters increases. If you want to cut through the clutter, here are some tips on how to effectively start and maintain a relationship with your media contacts (oddly illustrated with an unfortunate abundance of soccer references):

• If you work at a PR agency, there are two kinds of pitches—the kind a client approves and the kind that work. The key to a successful pitch is brevity and using three sentences or less as a Trojan horse to break into a reporter’s sphere of interest. Once the gate has been breached, then all those walls of text your client wants to bury them under can be shared. 
• Got a clever intro to your pitch? Great! Now delete it. Nothing screams “form letter” more than an opener that relies on wordplay (e.g., “Looking for a new way to meet your goals this year? These cutting-edge cleats are the answer.”)
• Before you send a pitch to a reporter, say it out loud to someone unfamiliar with your product to hear how it sounds. If it is loaded with jargon that you must dumb down, then use the dumbed down version for your pitch. 
• Most of the words brands use to describe their products are too vague and meaningless to a reporter, such as “cutting-edge,” “unique,” or “innovative”. Just tell the reporter what your product does in the same way you would explain it to a stranger on an elevator: “It’s a soccer ball that shoots out spikes when you kick it.” The reporter can then make the call as to how unique the product is.
• Don't assume reporters on a target media list are ideal for a pitch if you didn’t vet the list yourself. Purchased lists are notorious for being inaccurate, while internally maintained lists shared among a team can collect dead weight over time. This includes reporters who were added because they did a one-off feature that was relevant at the time, but then the person who added them left the account or forgot to provide context. Nothing makes bonding with media harder than sending them spam for not knowing their beat.
• Never try and get a story edited because you disagree with a reporter’s opinion. If they got the facts wrong or made blanket assumptions about something where you can educate them (e.g., “not ALL spiked soccer balls are lethal; one kid survived an entire game last year”), then that’s different, but if they say your product sucks, then good luck getting them to change subjective thoughts after a story has run.
• Always include PT, ET, and International time zones on embargoed news and it’s better to use more creative times than on the hour, such as 6:15 am instead of 6:00 am. Otherwise, your embargo is competing with a lot of other news timed to break at the same time so it might not run exactly when you or the reporter wants it to.
• When providing a canned quote, leave out sentiments about how excited or pleased you are since media assume you are happy with any news you are sharing so that part of the quote will rarely make it to print. Instead use the quote to say something meaningful that goes beyond rehashing the press release.
• If you are pitching a product for a "mancave," you will be perceived as someone who lives in a cave.