Mad Bloggers

Mike Arrington observes:

All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn’t used to be this way, but it’s becoming more and more of a problem. As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.

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Funny thing, just the other day I was discussing with another PR blogger the increasingly common “we’re offering you an embargo” emails we’re both getting from firms who obviously never read our blogs, or just could not care less as long as they can get a hit, any hit.

With the economy rapidly going to hell in a hand basket, this will only get worse. As Mike points out, the agencies are under a tremendous amount of pressure and that pressure means that increasingly lower paid, junior staff are on the front lines with little or no supervision and are being told to produce or take a walk. Which means more candidates for the Bad Pitch Blog and more pissed off tech bloggers.

Update: I like Brian Solis’s take on this:

The truth is that embargoes are special. They are not supposed to be used as a “PR trick” for locking-in stories with anyone and everyone. Ideally, they’re strategically reserved for important stories and they’re only effective when used in a “less is more” approach. Embargoes ARE NOT dead, however, they need to be practiced with great focus and respect. I guarantee you greater results and stronger relationships if you work with a smaller group of trusted and relevant contacts rather than embargo spamming everyone from the A-list to the C-list in your wish list.

This isn’t email marketing. It’s not a numbers game. There are real people on the other side of our “pitch.” This process must become humanized once again.

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Update 2: Robert Scoble points out that many companies are getting more hits through Twitter than through TechCrunch. I’m not so sure about the number of hits but I could imagine that dealing with Twitter is a lot easier than dealing with TechCrunch.

Update 3: Centernetwork’s Allen Stern has a very thoughtful piece on all of this. The money quote:

At the end of the day, it’s all about trust and relationships. It seems to keep boiling down to that, no matter if it’s about paid reviews, advertisers, how winners are selected at startup conferences or embargoes.

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Update 4: ReadWriteWeb is very happy to take your embargoed news.

Related Posts:

• Public Relations For Start Ups
• Embargoed
• A SHIFT in New York