(sorry about the image, purely as a place holder)
A particularly bad PR experience awhile back prompted me to write this. Now if you work in the PR industry, don’t necessarily be offended cause I’m far from singling you out, I’m just out to represent the perspective from somebody from the “other side”. Over the last 3 years or so, I’ve had more than my fair share of people hitting me up in regards to whatever new product/event have you. It’s been an ongoing analysis as to what are the key elements to an efficient way to communicate what you’re peddling for your own brand/client. The Internet is still a phenomenon that some people still don’t grasp or understand, and I don’t blame them. The platform is so complex that previous approaches and standards just don’t carry-over. While it’s hard to teach a dog new tricks, just like anything you do, continued and sustained success comes when one is at least be receptive to the changing landscape. That means trying to learn something new since previous ways of the past which may have worked in PR 1.0 and the print world simply don’t cut it. The initial drafts of this definitely came across as ranty and straight-up hating and maybe it still does… maybe I should of left it the original way for comedic value but I’ve toned it down a bit.
Subject
You’d think this one is self-explanatory, a subject refers to the focus of the email. So in saying so, “hey” or “what up” doesn’t constitute proper use of the subject field.
The Blind Carbon Copy and the follow-up Carbon Copy
Please don’t make my email in plain view to somebody I don’t want seeing it. Mind you it’s not hard to find my email, but I get enough senseless crap for mixtapes as is.
Proper Addressing
I’ll be honest, I feel a lot more guilty when I get an email that addresses me by name and I don’t reply. Don’t send some generic introduction, even going a little bit further and addressing by first name goes a long way. It’s just anytime you virtually open your mouth on the internet, if you utilize names, people take you more seriously and perhaps even a bit guilty to hastily delete.
Imagery
Would you send a print magazine a 200 px wide image? No? So don’t send me some tiny ass images that will look pixelated and terrible if I up-size to a larger but still very much reasonable 620 pixel width. But ideally, if you go with sending something 1200 pixel wide it is never a bad thing since there’s room for cropping and what not. Please don’t give me some bullshit like “I don’t want to overload your server” so I sent you these 200 px wide images. Also, why bother asking people to email back if they need larger imagery? Most email clients allow you to receive relatively large files. Gmail which most people use allows for up to 25 MB. Do everybody a favor, re-size your images to 1200 px wide, Save As Web in Photoshop @ 100 and things will be much more efficient.
Copy/Press Release
Don’t like it when people mis-interpret or mis-appropriate your product? Well offer some basis to what the product represents and what it’s all about. Even if the “blogger” you are sending the information to is super lazy, at least the press release they copy and paste will have all the pertinent information regarding the product’s description.
Release Date/Price/Retail Location
How are people supposed to cop your shit if you don’t provide the bare necessities?
Name Your Files Properly
Nothing irks me more than this. All of a sudden if I have a mulitude of email attachement downloads for the day on my desktop, the last thing I want to do is have to click “untitled-2.jpg” to see what the file is all about. Is it that hard to have a consistent naming to all the files? Sorry, but “Spring Collection” or generic “Press Release” folder means jack shit to me as well… how about BRAND – SEASON – YEAR. If I have to go the extra step of having to un-zip something to see what’s inside, yet more time wasted.
PREVIEWS
Ok this one is a selfish request… it helps me make the decision of deleting your email that much quicker. That is when you send an email, have a teaser picture at the top so that people know exactly what you’re presenting. This way I don’t have to go through all the previous crap to know that I should have deleted your email from the get-go. Or on the upside, if I know exactly what I’m dealing with, I’ll know whether it’s of importance to post up right away… or else risk having me forget about it and then see it the next day where it’s probably “dated” news (yes unfortunately 24 hours does make a difference).
It bothers me when I make simple suggestions to these PR people to facilitate the process. I’m often on a 6 to 12 hour time zone difference so by the time I get your email and have to ask for different images etc… there goes pretty much the whole day. Being from an older PR generation isn’t necessarily the problem, but the inability to change with the times and constantly adapt to do a better and more efficient job IS a problem. The ignorance of the old school means that the realm of online marketing is still perhaps one generation away from realizing its full potential. The 30-somethings and up that are running the show right now need to either get with the times or be replaced by the 20-somethings (in ~5-10 years time) that DO understand how things are working.
-Eugene