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When Donald Trump gathered the press at Trump Tower 20 months ago to announce his unlikely candidacy for president, he reportedly paid actors to fill the marble lobby and cheer.
Not much — and everything — has changed since.
On Wednesday morning, when the president-elect once again faced hundreds of reporters from around the globe gathered in his lobby -- this time for his first press conference in seven months — Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted members of the media as purveyors of “fake news.”
It was Trump’s method of battling back an extraordinary report that U.S. intelligence officials have presented both Trump and President Barack Obama with unverified allegations that Russia has compromising information about the incoming 45th president, including about a reported salacious encounter in a Moscow hotel room....
You can bet that this tactic is probably not part of any public relations textbook.
St. Louis reporter Elliot Davis tried to score an interview with the city’s comptroller, Darlene Green. The request was denied via email, so Davis went to City Hall to speak with her about the city-owned car she drives, which costs taxpayers $26,000.
That’s when Green’s spokeswoman, Melanie Streeper steps in. Watch what happens....
Merry Christmas!
I wish I could give all of you a present, but that’s not going to happen on my salary. I am, however, going to offer a gift to a bunch of public relations folks by mentioning stories they begged me to write, but I didn’t get around to.In a way, this is a present to everyone — at least, I’m sparing you an analysis of the third-quarter GDP while you are egg-nogged out. (That’ll be on Tuesday, so please sober up by then.)...
General Motor’s Mary Barra admitted this week that, “something went wrong with our process…and terrible things happened.”
And while that is certainly true and laudable for the new CEO of the auto giant to admit her company mishandled some safety issues for 13 years, saying she is deeply sorry is not quite enough.
Yesterday, she held what GM described as a news conference but, according the the WXYZ-TV report below, only handful of print reporters were invited, slamming the car door on local Detroit stations and the national news networks.
There are times (particularly when dealing with good news situations) when companies can play favorites. But when you are in a hole like GM — you can’t afford to annoy major parts of the media....
In Washington-speak, a "full Ginsburg" is when one person appears on all five major Sunday news programs in a single day. The feat was first performed in 1998 by William Ginsburg , the attorney for Monica Lewinsky. Since then, the trick has been performed about 18 times -- often by Presidential candidates.
If you are not running for office --and you are doing a Ginsburg, chances are you are running for your life. Even if one or two of the interviews is pre-taped, it is hard on a person to keep their energy up and their talking points down.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer logged a full Ginsburg this morning. We'll leave to others to rate the substance of his answers -- but the way they were delivered was not impressive....
Apparently John Tortorella has little patience for reporters. As coach for the the N.Y. Ranger hockey team, some might argue that media relations is part of his job -- but it is clear that he would rather try to water ski behind a Zamboni than have to respond to journalists.
A local Memphis TV station cameraman was taking video of some art work on a city owned car inspection station. Charles Weaver, a municipal employee didn't like it. Weaver's chosen method of discouraging photography is not one we recommend. He put the cameraman in a headlock and threw him to the ground. You can see the report below....
When Should PR Pros ‘Tell Journalists How to Do Their Jobs?’ Doh...bad PR... Well here’s a highly fraught debate: to what degree should PR pros manage the message in content created by the journalists they pitch? When does “making helpful suggestions” turn into “telling journalists how to do their jobs?” This week journalist Jim Romenesko (who everyone in media should follow on Twitter and Facebook) brings us a couple of cases in which he and some of his colleagues believe that PR pros went too far. In the first instance, a reader who is also a newspaper editor received an unusually bold pitch from a man who claims to transcend the traditional role of the flack...
Eater.com asked 11 fast-food chains in the U.S. whether they use horse meat. Ten of them said really, truly, unequivocally, NO. But number 11?!
Denny's: Reps said they were unable to provide comment.
Denny's did not deny serving horse meat. Um, P.R. fail much?!?!?
...So a reporter from KSDK showed up at Roberts Brothers, the company in question, to ask why they were being so un-neighborly. Roberts Brothers front door was locked -- but it is made of glass and the receptionist can be seen crawling under her desk to avoid the camera. According to KSDK she stayed there for over a half hour -- sticking her head up from time to time to see if the coast was clear. It wasn't....
Our Los Angeles-based friend, Serena, tipped us off to Time's Editor-at-Large, Harry McCracken. Harry has started posting bad pitches on his Facebook page. And we're glad. But we're betting the agency that sent it would like to send him the above someecard.
Facebook: Our Inner Dialogue...Online
Social media tends to become an inner dialogus of sorts. And we want folks like Harry to vent the pressure of bad pitches. Am I being dramatic? Well a now ancient sitcom once said, "Serenity Now, Insanity Later." And Facebook's serving that purpose for Harry....
...But why are PR companies still resorting to mass blasts? Do they really want to be in the email marketing business? I’ve pasted the mass-blast pitch from the division of Ruder Finn that came my way promoting Peter Guber’s book, “Tell to Win,” at the end of this post. If the PR person had taken 60 seconds to do a Google search [site:ishmaelscorner.com Guber] she would have known that I’ve already reviewed the book. If the PR person had taken another 60 seconds for a general search [“lou Hoffman” and “guber], she would have discovered that I wrote and placed a review of the book in VentureBeat.... [The only result from mass email pitching is bad PR ~ Jeff]
NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2012 — In the news release, Chart-Topping Songstress, Rihanna, Takes It All Off With New Scent, issued 16-Nov-2012 by Parlux Ltd. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the first paragraph, first sentence, should read “...Nude by Rihanna, on Black Friday at Macy’s” rather than “...Nude by Rihanna, this November 2012” as originally issued inadvertently.
Good. Glad we cleared that up. Meanwhile, “chart-topping songstress”? I understand her ditties are the bee’s knees, penned by Tin Pan Alley’s finest. But is this 2012 or 1922? Let’s join Beavis and Butthead and read some more of the press release.... [PR sillies... ~ Jeff]
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In a reply to a publicist who contacted me recently on some subject or another, I surprised even myself when I wrote to her that I could not take up her pitch because she used the phrase “reaching out” in her email.
If memory serves, I actually went so far as to tell her it is my policy to say no to pitches in which the phrase “reaching out” or any of its variants is applied. It was a ridiculous, ornery reply to a well-meaning request for coverage, for which I apologize.
However, the “reaching out” phrase rankled me, and I am trying to figure out why. One reason is its overuse. This phrase -- “reaching out,” “reach out,” “reached out” or whatever form it takes -- is certainly overused in the p.r. biz today (and in many other places too)....
Hello again, readers.
Since we didn’t quite have time to peruse our favorite pitch responses last Friday, here’s a new edition of our weekly media relations series, put together with the help of our friends at Muck Rack.
First, Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times may be the most powerful tech journalist in all of media right now, and he has a point to make...
If you're going to launch a "War on Fox News" -- and decide to appear on the Fox News Channel anyway -- you should have been prepared better than this.
...The first lesson is this, as stated by Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard: “Pro tip: If you’re running for Congress and pledging a “war on Fox News” then it’s probably best not to appear on Fox News.”
But I only agree with that partially. Appearing on Fox News while pledging a war on the network could have turned this local Democratic candidate into a popular national Democratic hero—if he was a skilled debater who could have held his own against an experienced host....
The sad thing about ratings is they make people do strange things. You may be familiar with theOscar “Blade Runner” Pistorious trial in South Africa where Olympic/Paralympic wunderkind shot his model girlfriend because he allegedly thought she was robbing his joint.
Everyone is interested in more information on this trial. How do we know? Ratings.
To wit, NBC News did whatever it could to earn the attention of Reeva Steenkamp’s mother for a series of interviews. As you can in the screen shot, it’s a hoity-toity “exclusive,” which is supposed to mean NBC got it and everyone else is watching it. Only one problem, the inference is that NBC News got it the old fashioned way —they eaaaaaaaaarned it.
Nah, the new school way is more trendy — they paid for it. By some reports, for $100,000....
Integrity is the Achilles’ heel. No doubt Goldman Sachs has previously had its fair share of battles with Bloomberg but complaining to news organizations about bias and unfairness rarely works. This time it was different. A bruised eye for a leading news organization and a PR point for Goldman Sachs for starting a news cycle debate about journalist integrity. When there is a breach of procedure any PR is on firm ground to go ahead and complain. Choose your battles wisely....
File this one away as one of the most ill-advised comments ever by a government spokesperson. Lois Lerner, a senior Internal Revenue Service official was on a conference call this afternoon briefing reporters on a brewing crisis. The IRS is admitting (after having denied it for some time) that some of their personnel inappropriately used their positions to target some conservative organizations. When trying to explain some statistics in relation to the matter Ms Lerner, a ranking IRS official, confessed "I'm not good at math." That's like the Surgeon General admitting that she can't stand the sight of blood....
...When you find out the aforementioned movie critic passed away via email, it sucks even more. It sucks to find out someone died via email at all, right? But when that email is a pitch shoving "a relevant expert" down your throat, it's a whole new universe of sucking. It's a dimension of sucking so far beyond the "sucks universe" that it takes light from sucks a year to reach it. It's a state of sucking so far beyond sucking it takes the light from sucking one year to reach this new level of bad pitching. You get the idea. Yet, less than 24 hours after Roger Ebert went to the big movie theatre in the sky, someone who shall remain nameless, sent out the following pitch en mass. This pitch was sent to me separately by Shannan amd Traci - two different PR professionals....
Their first interview subject is Kevin Dugan, a veteran of both the journalism and PR disciplines. He is the co-author of the Bad Pitch Blog, winner of an Award of Commendation in the Blog category from the Public Relations Society of America and a listed member of the AdAge “Power 150“. He tweets under the @prblog handle. From your experience, which email pitches do journalists pay attention to, and what makes them read the press release? Pitching success boils down to relevance. In fact, the list is more important than the pitch. If it’s relevant? It can be long. It can have large attachments. I don’t care because I’m focused on the relevant content and not how it was packaged. How often is it relevant? Rarely. Unfortunately, everyone seems to spend hours crafting the pitch and minutes creating the list. It should be the opposite. Online audience identification tools are used for scale instead of for accuracy and insight. And this assumes someone is creating a pitch in the first place. Far too many publicists just send a news release. But the release isn’t the pitch, it supports the pitch. It’s background. When I only get a news release? I know it’s a mass pitch. That makes it 10 times less likely I will read that email....
PR FAIL of the Day Shortly after the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, BuzzFeed posted a few unflattering screen captures from Beyoncé’s performance. Fast forward to yesterday, BuzzFeed was apparently contacted by the pop star’s publicist who requested the removal of her photos he deemed “unflattering.” Needless to say, the e-mail exchange quickly gave way to the latest headline that reads “Beyonce’s Publicist Asks BuzzFeed To Remove ‘Unflattering’ Photos.” Seriously though, are there still publicists in Hollywood who didn’t get the memo from Barbara Streisand’s PR agent?...
Auto firm Tesla is giving a New York Times reviewer a car. The goal was to show off Tesla's "electric highway" of charging stations for its electric car between Washington and Boston. The problem was that the car didn't make it.
Who gave the most disastrous sound bite of 2013? While the snappy, clever phrase is the dream of every publicist and journalist, life doesn’t always go along with the plan. As we look back at the year in PR and media, we present four of the deadliest quotes of 2012. In each case, silence would have been golden.
November 19th, 2012
Working (badly) in PR, you really can have it both ways. Come up with a dodgy PR story which fits perfectly into a perceived stereotype and narrative, and you can guarantee you’ll... [More faux research studies leading to bad PR from people who've done it in the past. ~ Jeff]
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More about fake news agency news conferences…