You know I think one of the harder jobs in motorsports is being a public relations representative with a team, driver or both. They are constantly traveling, and constantly working all in the pursuit of getting someone else’s attention. They are often the most overlooked and under appreciated people in the business.
As many know the most vital part of public relations is bringing news to journalists and media outlets to grow the profile of the company or individual one represents. All of this is done in a number of ways; through phone calls, meetings, but perhaps most common these days through press release email blasts. In turn these things help give us journalists story ideas and good information from the source.
All that being said I have a bone to pick (as do other journalists, check this out).
Teams use these email blasts to send out pre and post race reports among other things, which is fine, but with increasing frequency they are sending these things out to inform us all when their driver or sponsor sneezes. I’m not sure if teams and agencies have started paying these professionals by the release, but too often you get them and they have absolutely no news value. Do I care your driver is making a sponsor appearance at the local grocery story? No. I also don’t care that sponsor X has named John Doe their fan of the week. Am I going to waste my time writing a story about this? Absolutely not.
To be perfectly honest, more often than not when I get these things, I delete them without even looking at them. I know I am not alone in this. After a while it becomes irritating and they start getting sent to my spam folder. TC and I have even started getting them, unsolicited in our email boxes for the blog.
So here is my plea. If you work in public/media relations in motorsports please stop sending out press releases that contain things that aren’t newsworthy. Before you even write something, think to yourself, ‘is this something I can honestly see being disseminated to a larger audience by a member of the media?’ Then after you write it, do it again. And then one more time before you hit send. If you do this we all be a little better for it.
Oh and to those that fit this category who send us emails here, please stop wasting your time, because we don’t care. We aren’t a press release aggregator. Thanks in advance.
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on Mar 5th, 2009 at 2:07 am
You are not alone, you are really not alone, I get these types of emails regularly in my email box, but most likely not at the level you both do, however while I welcome some of them and will publish them with a very comments from as this is blogging and blogging requires comments from the blogger themselves and then again, some others I will not publish at all.
I love this: the official hotel of what in Atlanta, you finished 27th, wow that amazing, oh brother, like that, I am always amazed with what peole want me to watch or read and write on it later, but bottom line, I feel the same way, some I will and some I will NOT and don’t be offended, but I can’t write on everything nor want too either. Good Luck, hopefully this article you published gets some of there attention…
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Don’t you think NASCAR (or motorsports in general) has done itself a disservice in last decade, or two, with an ever younger driver line-up? NASCAR originated from the folklore of moonshine runners and wild west-like characters turned warriors of the blacktop, and dirt! Those stories, along w/ the swashbuckling owners, crew chiefs (ie suitcase Jake) and drivers have been overrun with the latest gong show winner or tailored and catered to karting champion under contract since age 6. These kids probably have more shear talent than the pioneers, but not much to write a novel about.
I go to sleep when I hear most drivers “talk” a lot, without ever “saying” anything. Not naming names here, but at least “Rubber Head” (for you seasoned followers) has hung up his suit and hopefully not long for the booth. KuB, please, please break from RW’s mold and speak with relevance.
Thank you Stewart for being a factor on track, and maybe more importantly to NASCAR PR….off track! And kudos to Tony’s PR sidekick, you deserve a stimulus bonus…
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 11:48 am
PR professionals certainly need to walk a fine line between what’s too much and not doing enough in their jobs! I wonder if the current economic climate has caused what seems to be an increase in their activity based on what you say. Everyone certainly wants to keep themselves busy! It could also be due to the change in how their jobs are done these days. Increasingly, marketing and PR are being intertwined with technology, the Internet, and social media and the more communication you have out there on a constant basis, the more exposure you get and also higher search engine rankings. Anyway, good luck!
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I have a website geared towards providing NASCAR information to the general public so I welcome all the press releases (even the mundane ones). I certainly don’t receive the amount you do and I’m not an *insider* so I was thrilled they even acknowledged I was a viable website to send promotions to. If they’re willing to ask me to promote their team/driver, I’m willing to help them out.
Send me all the PR’s – Just not today, I’ve got a real busy schedule.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Michael, I met you back in 1985 when I was at IRP and you were with Newman/Haas. I was impressed, and still am. I particularly liked your “suggestions” to the NASCAR PR people. The idea that they should spend more time in the media center made me think they could learn from some of NHRA’s team PR reps. They not only spend time in the center and ask if they can be of help, they actually work out of the media center rather than their team transporters. And they say “yes” more often than “no.”
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
John: Just FYI, this isn’t Michael’s blog. If you’d like to contact him, see http://spindoctor500blog.blogspot.com.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I’m not involved in the PR business, so strictly speaking as an “outsider”, do you think that the flood of mundane, repetitive, meaningless releases are a result of it being “too” easy in this information/internet/email age to simply blanket the market w/ a keyboard and a click of the mouse? Sometimes the useful stuff gets buried in the mass of text. I can only read “so” many emails in my office before losing interest and potentially overlooking the interesting facts and opinions buried beneath.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Neon,
Yes, you make a good point. Unfortunately, I don’t see things turning back now. Just look at where things are going with Twitter’s popularity. People are posting information as to what they are doing every minute of the day. If that isn’t TMI (too much information) I don’t know what is! I guess we’re all going to have to get good at sifting through information. Good luck!
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
RaceDriven: I got that release to. That same team sent three releases that day. One was news, the other two weren’t Seriously, its getting to where the stuff they send out is nothing more then 1-ply toilet paper. I am on pretty much every teams PR but Michael Waltrip Racing (for some reason?), and many of the Nwide and Truck Teams. That’s a lot of releases. Plus, I get some from MLB and NFL teams for my other websites as well.
But, I love this article, and hope some PR people will read it. Unless there is a crew chief, personal change, or your advancing the next race, I am probably not going to be interested. And, these PR people need to realize that we media are a big part of any job security that they have. If it weren’t for us, we would not need them. Because all of the promotion would be done in print ads and tv and radio ads.
I also totally agree with the link to the blog post.
on Mar 5th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I had a long wait trying to access http://spindoctor500blog.blogspot.com/ It shows that TNI has a large group of readers when posting a link results in that site getting slashdotted.