Are PR agencies bad at their jobs?
When I left the BBC, I had 138,000 unread emails in my inbox. This was before LLM-fuelled slop-celeration of junk pitches. Many were internal lists. Many were PR pitches.
This isn't at all unusual. And the numbers suggest it still holds true
Regular reports from Propel show that reporters respond to about 3% of pitches sent to them. Fewer than half of pitches are even opened.
Muckrack's figures back this up. In fact, 54% of journalists say they seldom or never respond to PR pitches. Another 25% respond about half the time, while just 15% say usually and 6% always.
The same research says that relevance remains the core challenge, with 43% of journalists saying they seldom receive pitches that match what they cover, and 4% saying never. (21% say always or usually).
Propel says on average, it takes about 31 media pitches to any range of journalist contacts to get a response to any one of the pitches you send to them.
If a surgeon or a lawyer had numbers like this, they would be hauled before a professional standards board.
But it's not an apples for apples comparison.
PR is a very human art form that dresses itself up as something more scientific. PR professionals are only ever guessing what an editor thinks. It's an educated guess, but it's still a guess.
And on top of that, they are dealing with clients who don't always understand the dance or simply don't accept that nobody is interested in their corporate messaging.
But the numbers suggest that there will need to be change. Journalist numbers are dropping, while the number of pitches in increasing.
At the same time, earned placements are arguably growing in importance because LLMs prefer to use them in their responses.
What does all this mean?
First, give the journalists what they want. Tailor the pitches and keep them relevant. Even if your first pitch fails, at least they'll look at the second.
Second, a volume game won't work. You need to be the surfboard floating on the slop rather than the tsunami of rubbish underneath it.