Adventures in Candyland

I love Wired Magazine (I read almost every story every month - went to WiredNext Fest and plan on seeing the WiredHouse in LA ) and The Long Tail is a genius theory from a genius man, but come on Chris Anderson. I get that you get a ton of spam that has nothing to do with you from PR people. Unfortunately, this is a frustration for every person these days, whether they are an editor of a magazine, a business owner or a uhhh, a human being. I’m not saying you aren’t justified in your opinion that PR people need to be more targeted when pitching a story, but have a little sympathy, people are just doing their job. This is my response to said editor’s rant on ignorant PR people in his blog, The Long Tail.

In essence and ideally, PR people exist to provide a very worthwhile service to writers and editors - to make them aware of companies, people, products and concepts that they may not have time to learn about as they are often harried individuals always on some kind of a deadline. But, somewhere this help that we are supposed to be providing has become an annoyance that journalists now thwart and harp negatively on.

But, instead of outing every poor person who is really just doing their job, even if they may not be doing it well, how about if as I have complained about for numerous years and this PR Week Q & A from one of the aforementioned outees seconds, that journalists be more proactive and detailed about keeping their beats and what they cover current on Bacons, Vocus or on the company website. For so many writers there is no detail provided and even so, beats change often and writers move around often. It’s not always easy to figure out who covers what - even if you are an avid reader of multiple publications. This would provide less of an excuse for PR people to flagrantly send mismatched pitches. No sob story here, but why not make it easier for both sides to give and get what is pertinent to and from them.

Would journalists prefer the whole business of PR would just go away for good? There is sort of a circle of life when it comes to editorial and PR, so I really don’t think that’s the solution. Besides PR people being consistently all-knowing, how can we solve this problem constructively and peacefully?

Come on, pitch me your ideas!

We’ve been working on some Web 2.0 marketing campaigns for some of our clients, but none of them have been nonprofits.  But we have been talking alot about how more nonprofits can and should be taking advantage of Web 2.0.  The thing is, we haven’t seen all that many good creative examples of this, particularly for smaller organizations.  Even when we scour nonprofit resources, much of what they advise seems pretty basic and formulaic…not much creativity.

BUT…yesterday I saw this article in The Washington Post about how the local Goodwill chapter has created a YouTube fashion show video and a blog with vintage fashion tips.  Now there’s some creativity!

If you know of some smaller nonprofits using Web 2.0 in creative ways, let me know.