how-not-to-do-your-job

Useful Media Relations 101

Hamilton Nolan · 04/29/08 01:37PM

This email has been floating around for a week or so, but we're going to run it as a public service. It was first circulated by a PR guy named Peter Shankman as a classic "How Not To Pitch A Reporter" lesson. In this case, the email pitch below was sent to a hedge fund reporter. That is to say, a professional journalist who spends his days chronicling the ins and outs of the secretive high finance world. So one might have expected that a PR firm would cull its email blast list just a bit before it went to work on behalf of its "Long Island based car shop" client. But no! Pitches like this are why reporters hate PR people. CAN YOU GUESS WHICH PR AGENCY THIS CAME FROM? The full pitch (to, again, a hedge fund reporter), and the stunning reveal of the agency's identity, after the jump.