My husband Keith, a PHOENIX TV reporter, received a mass email pitch about a FLORIDA home for sale. Or maybe the angle was about the real estate firm now using social media? Either way, the email was off on many levels:

• There was nothing personal about it. The pitch could just have been a junk email sent to my mom. No salutation, not directed at Keith. Wrong reporter period.
• We live in the desert. Across the country. Why would anyone here care? Besides, Floridians seem to be migrating to the Valley of the Sun to escape hurricanes and the high cost of home insurance.
• The real estate firm is now using social media! Woo-hoo! That’s good news. For them.

So, what could this real estate firm have done differently?

• Find a Phoenix connection. Localize their pitch so viewers here would care.
• Focus on people, not products. See our earlier blog post about building your story around people not products.
• Personalize their pitch. Find out whom to direct it to.
• Don’t dilute the pitch with too many angles. Zero in on one great pitch at a time.
• Don’t send anything at all. It was a far stretch to call their “story” news.

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Do you ever think about the way you pitch your clients’ stories to the media as an extension of their brands? I like to think of what a brand is in a sensual way. (Don’t get the wrong idea – stay with me here.) Think of a brand as a tactile experience. It’s everything you see, hear, touch, smell and sometimes taste about a product, service or company. So think about applying that thought to the way you pitch. What kind of sensual experience are you offering to get reporters to bite?

Don’t let your client be just another talking head in a media interview. It’s show and tell time, baby! My TV reporter husband Keith Yaskin likes to call it that, anyway. In your media pitch, it’s always a good idea to highlight the visual elements of your story idea. Think about what “shiny objects” you can use to dazzle reporters. Let’s go to my husband Keith for a reporter’s spin on visual ways to sell and tell your story.

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