In the food biz, press releases can be a great tool for spreading the word about your client—if you go about it the right way. We receive dozens of pitches a day, and we’ve seen it all: pitches that lead to excellent feature stories, pitches that make us cringe and pitches that just won’t go away.
Here are five of the most common pitching blunders we see, along with a few suggestions on what we'd rather get.
1. The super-specific pitch
What we get:
We get a lot of pitches from restaurant PR and wine/spirits PR suggesting stories on a single dish, a single drink recipe, a single bottle of wine for a specific holiday. We appreciate your research, but immediately fear that another publication will print what you’ve suggested. We want to offer something different from everyone else!
What to pitch instead:
Send out a ‘feeler’ pitch with looser suggestions, giving the press a sense of your client, a broad suggestion of something that might catch their eye. If you’re a restaurant, perhaps that’s a complete list of new dishes for the season and a helpful career history of your chef. If you’re a gallery, perhaps it’s a longer-term calendar that will allow us to get ahead in our planning. If you’re pitching a wine story, suggest grapes, but not specific bottles yet. Start a conversation with the press and more authentic, interesting coverage will result.
2. The way-off topic pitch
What we get:
If you sell washing machines, consider if the person you’re contacting writes or edits a media outlet that covers washing machines.
What to pitch instead:
Read a few days worth of every website, magazine and newspaper you’d like to contact and search for your topic of interest. Send your pitch only to those people who have demonstrated that they cover what you’re selling.
3. The late pitch
What we get:
An invitation to cover an event the morning of or the day before. A notification that it's "National [X-type Food] Day!" on the day of. We have no time to do anything with this information.
What to pitch instead:
If you’re throwing an event you’d like us to cover, please let us know about it 5-10 days in advance. If you’re suggesting we write about your client for National Flavored Vodka day, float the idea to us 10 days ahead.
4. The edible pitch
What we get:
A few dozen mini cupcakes, or perhaps an entire thawed leg of lamb that you'd like for us to taste. Unfortunately, we eat every single day for a living. Our lives are filled with tastings, most of them scheduled well in advance. We don't have room in our waistlines to squeeze in a half dozen cupcakes without notice, much as we'd like to try them.
What to pitch instead:
We appreciate the whisky-filled donuts you delivered to our office, but they will probably spoil before we have a chance to write about them. Before sending perishable goods, it’s considerate to check in with us and see if we’re interested so that we can schedule a good time for you to ship and for us to taste them.
5. The repeat pitch
What we get:
If your pitch didn’t work for us the first time, don’t send it again. Don’t ‘check in with us’ about it, and don’t—please, please don’t—call us to see if we got it. If we didn’t answer, it’s because it didn’t fit with our coverage. Unfortunately, we just don’t have time to answer every single pitch we receive.
What to pitch instead:
Wait until there is news—a new product, a new menu item, new hours of operation, before you write us again. If at first you don’t succeed, try someone else instead.
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