This Week in PR Takes - Week 17

Take of the Week:
It’s not often that the Wall Street Journal writes about PR in terms of pitch subject lines, but that is exactly what Patrick Coffee covered this week. I would be remiss if this weren’t the Take of the Week. Patrick asks the question, “Is this the future of public relations?” and I agree with the point that Wendy Zajack made in the article about comms still living in a 1:1 interpersonal engagement between humans.

Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly pro-AI and think that it has the ability to transform how communications work can be done. However, as it stands right now, the email in the story might have gotten an “open” (which is another metric PR firms measure and is a whole other debate), but didn’t move the needle in terms of actually building a relationship. In my opinion, outreach strategies like this are a race to the bottom that try to chase the “open” metric, without thinking about the human who receives the email.

Here is the link to the story, for those that haven’t read it yet.
And, here is a link to his LinkedIn post for more context.

The Rest of the Takes:
- Money.com’s data editor Adam Hardy not only wrote about what makes a great data pitch, but took a screen shot in his post to help educate other PR pros
-There is often much discussion about PR vs. Marketing, and Kathryn Goater dissected this a bit further
- Dan Freedman shared tips from a journalist for instant red flags when CEOs do broadcast interviews
- Bashing your clients on LinkedIn? Dustin Siggins wrote about why you may not want to do that
- There is often a question of follow ups to journalists, and Kimanzi posted about this in the context that news does not always happen on company timelines
- Praveen published some thoughts on how to explain PR to a 5 year old, using the concept of a lemonade stand as an example
- Andrew wrote about 5 common traits that most successful pitches have in common
- There is often discussion around the constant drumbeat in PR, and Noah wrote about why a lack of consistency is detrimental to comms programs
 
That’s it for this week’s takes, thank you for taking the time to read.
-Brian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkramer/

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