Getting Ink

Is it Christmas yet?

I have an idea for a regular new feature on Getting Ink: "Things I hate about the Recession"

Number 1: Not being able to complain about having too much work to do when everyone else has turned on their out of office because you have to be grateful you're still getting work. Ugh.

Anyway, Sherrilynne has tagged me with the "seven things you don't know about me" meme, so I've got to think of seven new bits of information. Which, given my habit of being wildly indiscreet, isn't as easy as you might imagine. Anyway, here goes:

1. My favourite way to de-stress is swimming outdoors, at night, preferably in the winter. I find the cold induces a terribly calming brain freeze. Failing this, I resort to compound swear words.
2. I used to work at McDonalds and can still recite "It's McDonalds cola, is that alright?" and "Welcome to McDonalds, can I take your order please?"
3. I used to work for Greenpeace and can still recite: "Hi, I'm Sally, I'm with Greenpeace Canada. Have you got a few minutes to chat about why Metro Toronto has the fourth highest cancer rate in the world?"
4. I think people who have colour schemes for their Christmas decorations have too much time on their hands. Seriously.
5. I forged approximately 100 absence notes during my final two years at Greenlands High School for Girls. When the headmistress showed them to my parents with a flourish, my Mum pretended she'd written them so I wouldn't be expelled. Thanks, Mum. 
6. This year, I employed two dog walkers for over six months because I was too scared to fire either of them. Poor dog was exhausted.
7. The last download I made from iTunes was "The Theme from Greatest American Hero" by Joey Scarsbury. I'm more sophisticated than this makes me appear, honest.

Just one more reason to love Twitter

I posted a little comment of outrage on Twitter a week or so back when I heard the X-Factor winner would be releasing a version of Hallelujah, the classic Cohen/Buckley track. I got a few responses back from people who all feel, like me, it's just not really on.

Strictly Come Celebrity X-Factor on Ice nonsense has taken over weekend TV with its manufactured drama and disposable pop puppets - but I don't care. I don't watch ITV, I don't generally watch weekend TV, and the whole thing pretty much passes me by. But messing with my musical memories? That's something else entirely. Why can't they cover Westlife, or Barry Manilow, or some other nonsense? It's not like any of those X-Factor watching muppets actually cares about music, is it? So why go out of your way to offend those of us who do?

Of course, raging at 11pm on a Saturday night (while simultaneously trying to compare different methods of calculating risk on investment portfolios) is deeply unsatisfying. But I was saved by Twitter, which is positively boiling over with rage at the producers' choice of X Factor single.

Praise be for the Twitter tweeps and especially Emma, Anne, Jed, Badger and all those urging us to go and download Buckley's version repeatedly to keep X-Factor off the Christmas number 1 spot. I feel vindicated.

What makes a bad interview.

Generally, you shouldn't be a journalist if you don't like doing interviews - after all, talking to people and finding stuff out is about 90% of the job. But talking to some people sucks.

Like Mr "I'm going to finish my key marketing point without taking a break, talking all over your question if I have to".

Or Mr "I know you're writing about the public sector but I'm the head of corporate business, so I'm going to answer every question with an anecdote about corporate business, ok?"

Or Miss "I already sent you the article I've written but that's no reason for me not to read it out to you over the phone in response to your questions"

And my personal favourite of today, Mr "I know you asked for a customer interview and the customer is on the line - the THREE corporate communications people on the line with us are just a little bonus because it's nearly Christmas".

Of all these calls, I have to say, the most annoying is the guy who talked all over me. Seriously? It's just rude. If I just shut up and let you ramble, we'll be here for 20 minutes and I won't get what I need for my copy.

In fact, if you're on the phone with a hack and they don't ask a question at least every 3 minutes, I guarantee you it's because they've stopped listening and they're busy checking their email. If a hack interrupts you during an interview, I think it makes sense to stop - they're asking a question to try and get you to say something they can quote - and you want to be quoted, right?

Just make a note of what you were saying, and at the end of the interview, say something like: "I did just want to make sure I'd made the point that... "

Is there such a word as "uber-wank"?

Because really, there should be.

Uber-wank is what springs to mind when I read things like this: PR Peter Shanman reported as saying: "If your client can't convey a message in 140 characters, it needs to change." (this is reported by someone else, so apologies to Peter if he's been misquoted)

Or Dennis Howlett announcing to any PRs that email him: "“I’ve stopped accepting email pitches. Please follow me on Twitter and pitch in 140 characters or less.”

Seriously? Seriously??

What has the world come to when you're only interested in stories that can be explained in one or two sentences. Guess what? Sometimes the interesting stuff takes longer than that.

Dennis says he gets 20 PR pitches a day, and 90% of them are irrelevant. So that's 18 poorly targeted pitches a day - estimating it takes 30 seconds to scan each mail for relevance, that's, er,  9 wasted minutes a day. I don't think that's a major productivity issue, is it? Aren't there bigger things to worry about?

My issue with hacks who insist on Twitter pitches (twitches? tweeches? snitches? sneetches? - who knows what the kids are calling them these days?) is it's pure arrogance.

Asking for concise pitches and even expressing a preference for short pitches on Twitter is one thing. Insisting that you won't even deign to look at information submitted using a technology that 99% of people are familiar with, and insisting on them using a technology only 1% of people (if that) are familiar with? It's bobbins, I reckon.

A Journalist's ultimate responsibility is to the readers. Surely we have a responsibility to consider information on its merits, as far as is practical, and not to arbitrarily cut off 90% of the available information because it's not delivered in the precise format we'd prefer.

Visits on the other side of the fence Pt 201

As regular readers will know, I've done the odd spot of PR this year and it's been character-building, as my mother would put it.

I recently found myself being schmoozed by press release distribution services. I’ve issued two press releases for the client with Response Source and it’s pretty simple. Upload the release, pay £65, and the release has been picked up by some local papers and niche websites I wouldn’t have bothered to pitch myself.

The first release I put out did well – it got picked up by quite a lot of local papers, some quarterly regional mags and a couple of radio stations. My pitching had also got the client covered in a couple of national newspapers, and the major websites in the client’s sector. All good.

The second release? Not quite so good. It got picked up by the websites, but not the papers. They got a couple of BBC radio interviews out of it. Still, the client said, it was only £65 and they’d have paid a lot more than that for advertising on those sites and stations.

Except then the client gets a call from PR Newswire. The salesman tells them he saw their release, that he’s just been in a meeting with PA and the guy there really liked their press release! He thinks it should have got a lot more coverage than it did. And for just 10 times the price of the Response Source distribution, he can ensure their release is sent to PA, every national newspaper, plus thousands of ACCREDITED journalists. They will QUALITY CHECK the release to make sure it’s exactly what those journalists need.

The client asks me what I think. “Hmm,” I say (I like to say hmm, I think it makes me sound thoughtful when in reality I’m usually just covering gaps in my knowledge). “I sent the release to PA and it didn’t get picked up. Perhaps it’s just the wrong angle. And I sent it to the papers. I just wonder if it’s too similar to other stories they’ve run.”

So I go back to the salesman and say no thanks, we sent it to PA already. “Oh no,” says the salesman. “You sent it to one person at PA. We send it to everyone, all the desks. Also, it’s a really good press release. Very well written. I can definitely see it going into Metro and that sort of thing.”

I talk to the salesman some more and when he tells me the price of distribution, I seriously nearly fall off my chair. The first figure was the starting price - since our release is 700 words it costs even more. Blimey. Fortunately, turns out PR Newswire is quite flexible on price, so we negotiate a sensible discount and agree they can send out the release on the basis that we don’t have a lot to lose by trying it out.

At 8.30am the next morning, once the accounts people have taken the fee from my debit card because the client doesn’t have the required three years of audited company accounts to be considered worthy of credit, the release goes out. The result? A big, fat nothing. Nothing the next day. Or the day after.

Lessons learned?

• No matter what, remember the guy on the phone is a salesman, and engage your cynical side accordingly.
• Don't accept the price they tell you is standard. Everyone has a recession price list in the drawer that they'll take out if necessary.
• Distributing a rubbish release wider just makes more people realise it's a rubbish release. This is not necessarily progress.

Things Not to do in a Recession

I’ve been hearing about job losses, redundancies and cancelled contracts all over the place in recent weeks, and I’m hoping that my current packed schedule will continue well into 09. But at the same time, I think it’s important to be smart about a recession when you’re self-employed. Here’s some mistakes I’m promising myself I won’t make (again) next year:

• Letting clients pay at the end of a project: This would be fine except 80% of marketing projects over-run and expand to include extra work - so when I send in a (bigger than expected) invoice after three or four months, the client starts querying what I’m charging for, and I’m left scurrying back through emails to try and prove that, yes, they did ask for those extra two days of editing. Far better to agree staged payments in advance, and bill at least once a month.
• Doing lots of free ‘consultancy’ at the start of a project. I’ve always been happy to take one meeting or  a couple of conference call at the start of a potential project, to show clients I know what I’m doing and demonstrate my value, or something. But I recently spent three days providing a potential publishing client with a full features list for a proposed series of supplements, flatplan and detailed competitor analysis, only for the potential client NOT to get the contract. You can bet the execs at the publishing company got paid regardless – but I didn’t. Muppet.
• Payment on publication. This is depressingly common payment practice in magazines. Advertisers don’t generally pay until the magazine hits the newsstands, so it makes sense for magazines to pay writers at that point. Except that with today’s shrinking issue sizes, features can get held over almost indefinitely. I just got paid this morning for a feature that was commissioned almost exactly 12 months ago. I can’t afford to work extensively for clients who might not pay me until a year after I’ve done the work.
• Forgetting to pitch. When you’re busy it can seem impossible to find the time to keep selling – and stupid, too – why pitch when you don’t have time to take on more work. But this isn’t a market where a “wait and see what turns up” attitude is likely to work all that well, so I’m determined to set aside at least one or two days a month for marketing, ideas generation and pitching to new clients.

What have I missed?