Mike Arrington is attracting a lot of attention.
Some of it good.
And some of it from CEOs who think just because there’s a ‘Tech’ in the name of the blog, that Mike is somehow obliged to cover their company.
Here’s what Mike has to say about the latest version of the ‘cover me’ email.
In my agency days we had a lot of tech clients who (willfully or not) could not understand the sublties of the beat assignment. If a particular reporter had ‘enterprise’ in their beat list, you could be sure that every client with some variation of the ‘enterprise-wide solution’ would be banging down their door. And you as the PR drone would get the brunt of the blame if the reporter politely declined a ‘desk side meeting’ with your client, aka the ‘thought leader.’
The problem comes down to agencies not willing to correctly set clients straight. I hate to use the phrase ‘managing expectations’ but this is one situation where it fits. I have clients who were a perfect fit for Maintenance Monthly but who needed to stroke an egotistical CEO and pushed the agency to make a run at BusinessWeek. Didn’t matter what the business case was – if the company’s customers were really reading Maintenance Monthly. It’s about ego. We ‘belong’ there because we’re the most influential, forward thinking, blah blah blah.
You get the picture.
So agency peeps, here’s the first thought for 2006. Make sure your clients understand where they should be, not where they want to be.
And cut Mike some slack.
Update: The CEO in question respondes to Mike in the comments.
