PR News: Media Relations' Dirty Secret: 'Spray and Pray' Pitching 'Experts' Works, but for How Long?

Violet PR Account Director Christina Forrest spoke with PR News, offering insight into best practices for media relations. Check out her insight in the article below!

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PR trades, including PRNEWS, expound on authenticity’s virtues. Yet authenticity is a two-way street and includes journalists. So, here’s a confession: sometimes a media relations tactic routinely hated and long derided in surveys actually works.

It’s called spray and pray pitching and sometimes spammy pitching. A sub-category of it has a media relations person sending a large, automated list of journalists a pitch touting an expert source. Sometimes the pitch is repeated. For weeks and months. Same 'expert;' usually the same pitcher.

Perfect world

“The best situation, of course, is when a pitcher who’s worked previously with a journalist crafts a personal pitch,” says Christina Forrest, a director at Violet PR. “Our highest chance of getting coverage,” she says, “is building and maintaining great relationships with journalists.” Accordingly, she believes “bulk outreach” or blind pitching, which ignores recent time spent with a journalist, “runs the risk of damaging that relationship.”