Why Are PR Firms a Waste of Money? Here’s the Answer

Many believe that the retaining of a PR firm is a crucial component of startup success. For many VC-backed firms, a PR firm isn’t a second thought (VCs love PR firms).

But what do you really get for your money? As a D-list blogger, I’m often the recipient of press releases that typically come from PR firms. Most are impersonal and poorly-written. Of course, if you read blogs that I won’t name, it’s these very press releases that feed the content mill.

The truth is that for most companies, PR firms are a waste of money unless you find it fun paying a hefty retainer for sup-bar delivery of your company’s message that is more likely to get you a mention on a blog that posts 30 stories about social media on a daily basis than it is to get you a mention in the Wall Street Journal (which, incidentally, probably isn’t going to make your company an overnight success either).

For those who disagree and believe that PR firms provide value, I thought I’d provide a real-world example. I received the following email last week from an East Coast PR firm. Since I’m not a total prick, I’m eliminating the PR schlack who sent the email.

Hello Mr.,

Last week, WSJ writer Jeffrey Zaslow reported that, starting next month, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press will be offering home delivery just three days a week. So, readers who’ve made a daily ritual of perusing obituaries with their morning coffee — and who won’t go out to buy the paper or go online — aren’t necessarily going to learn about the deaths of their acquaintances. See article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123431793199571075.html

But what if there was a technology that kept readers informed about obituary news, anywhere and at any time of day?

That’s where Tributes.com steps in, the comprehensive resource for local and national obituary news and personal tributes. Tributes.com has over 82 million current and historical death records dating back to 1936.

Tributes.com makes sure that consumers can stay informed 24/7 and connected with accurate obit email alerts for any town in the US, alumni, family name,
or military unit. Users can set up alerts based on the zip code they currently reside in as well as previous locations they have lived in, and when someone has passed away in their community, an email will be sent to them with names of those who have passed. Those who like to read the morning obits as much as they like their morning cup of joe won’t have to worry about missing the opportunity to leave a message of condolence or to attend a funeral because of missing the news in the paper.

Like it or not, many newspapers are cutting back on home delivery and people want their news quickly and accurately. Tributes.com is the best alternative, go-to resource for obituary news, making sure no one is left in the dark about a passing.

A few interesting facts surrounding this include:

* The obituary market as a $750M-$1B nearly untouched industry
* Obituaries- “last man standing” – every other classified section has gone online and made millions (Match.com, eHarmony.com, EBay, Craigslist, Monster.com, etc.)
* Newspapers lost $64.5 billion in market value in 12 months in 2008
* 2.5 million people die in the U.S. every year, and 12,000 of those people are turning 50 every day

Please consider mentioning this in your blog. I would be happy to arrange an interview with Jeff Taylor, founder of Tributes.com and Monster.com, to speak about new online technology and a modern world is changing the face of the print obituary.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact me at [removed].

Thanks for your consideration.

One word came to mind as I read this: tasteless. Of course, I’m not exactly a saint but even I’m disturbed by the thought that there are people “who like [emphasis mine] to read the morning obits as much as they like their morning cup of joe.”

Notwithstanding the morbid subject matter, from a PR standpoint, the inclusion of an impersonal greeting such as “Hello Mr.,” is a cardinal sin. I have no idea where this PR firm got my email address but this leads me to believe that it came from a list (perhaps Tim O’Reilly is now selling my email address?).

Given that the PR pitches I typically receive aren’t sent by the Grim Reaper, I decided that I’d like to interview Jeff Taylor. My response:

Dear [removed],

Thank you very much for your email. Tributes.com sounds like a fascinating website and I would love to interview Mr. Taylor about it.

Since I am based in South America, would it be possible for me to submit my questions for Mr. Taylor by email?

Truly yours,

Felix Cardenas
Cartel Publications

Note that my name is not Felix Cardenas and I don’t work for the non-existent company, Cartel Publications. I figured that the From: name of Drama 2.0 and the inclusion of “Cartel Publications” probably meant I wouldn’t receive a response.

But proving that stupidity isn’t in short supply, I did. So I submitted my questions:

[removed],

Here are my questions:

1. What was the genesis for the Tributes.com idea?

2. How did you acquire the Tributes.com generic domain name?

3. Is there a potential for a virtual goods business with Tributes.com? With people paying real money to send virtual flowers and gifts on Facebook, could the same be done with the Tributes.com packages?

4. Do you have plans for alerts via SMS and Twitter?

5. Do you see the global recession killing off some of the growth in the obituaries business?

6. Do you have plans to expand to Latin America? My home country of Mexico, for instance, where 35% of our publications’ 100 million readers are located, has a ritual of ‘tributantes’ and these are a major part of the grieving process. They have become very prominent especially as unfortunate drug violence has increased. I could see Tributes.com doing very well in this market.

7. How will you prevent Tributes.com from being used for fraudulent purposes? Last year in Costa Rica, for example, a fraud ring was uncovered that used obituaries to locate identities that could be taken over to collect oil royalties.

8. Are there plans for an API that would enable others to develop applications that hook into your platform?

9. Where do you see Tributes.com in 5 years? The newspaper business?

Thank you so much. We look forward to the response and publishing the story!

Felix Cardenas
Cartel Publications
Serving Over 100 Million Readers in 50 Countries

Some of my questions are ridiculous (Twitter alerts for obits?). Others provide subtle hints that Felix Cardenas is full of shit.

For instance, the word “tributantes” in Spanish means “taxpayers” and Costa Rica has a whopping 0/bpd of oil production. I threw in the bit about Mexican drug violence and having 100 million readers in 50 countries (note that there aren’t 50 countries in Latin America) because I couldn’t resist. And to top it off, I figured the question, “Do you see the global recession killing off some of the growth in the obituaries business?”, was a sure-fire giveaway that I wasn’t exactly serious.

But apparently nobody picked up on the hints and nobody decided to check on “Cartel Publications”.

The email I received, with inline responses in bold.

Hello Felix,

Please see answers below from president of Tributes.com, Elaine Haney.

Looking forward to reading the post. Please let me know when you plan to publish it online.

Thanks again,

[removed]

—–Original Message—–

From: Drama 2.0 [mailto:drama20@hush.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 2:42 PM
To: [removed]

Subject: RE: Who Died Today? New Website Makes Sure You’re Always in the Know

[removed],

Here are my questions:

1. What was the genesis for the Tributes.com idea? The site is a spin-off of Eons.com, founded by Jeff Taylor the founder of Monster.com who over the course of many years of leading the migration of employment classifieds from print to online and watching other classified sections making similar successful migrations realized that there was no national online brand being formed which consolidated all obituary information to make it easy for consumers to locate service information and leave condolences when someone passes away. Tributes.com is focused on transitioning the last laggard classified section from print to online and ensuring that people never miss the opportunity to properly mourn a loss.

2. How did you acquire the Tributes.com generic domain name? It was purchased by Eons before Tributes formal formation as an age-neutral doorway into Eons Obits – Tributes.com’s predecessor.

3. Is there a potential for a virtual goods business with Tributes.com? With people paying real money to send virtual flowers and gifts on Facebook, could the same be done with the Tributes.com packages? Yes, this month in fact we launched gifting functionality in the memory books tied to the American Heart Association’s Heart Health Month donating all proceeds of virtual gifts/candles purchased to the popular charity.

4. Do you have plans for alerts via SMS and Twitter? We currently offer alerts via email that can be set to notify the user of any obits that enter the Tributes database where there is a documented association with a particular geography, school, family name, or military unit. Extensions of that capability for a variety of formats including RSS, Widgets, SMS and Twitter are all being explored as well as an alert tied to Celebrity Death news.

5. Do you see the global recession killing off some of the growth in the obituaries business? No – our business is fairly market insensitive.

6. Do you have plans to expand to Latin America? My home country of Mexico, for instance, where 35% of our publications’ 100 million readers are located, has a ritual of ‘tributantes’ and these are a major part of the grieving process. They have become very prominent especially as unfortunate drug violence has increased. I could see Tributes.com doing very well in this market. We are currently exploring the development of a Spanish version of our product for the US market which we could then market in other spanish-speaking countries.

7. How will you prevent Tributes.com from being used for fraudulent purposes? Last year in Costa Rica, for example, a fraud ring was uncovered that used obituaries to locate identities that could be taken over to collect oil royalties. We do not publish information such as social security numbers or specific address information for the deceased.

8. Are there plans for an API that would enable others to develop applications that hook into your platform? We have data definitions defined which allow us to take in data feeds from a variety of data sources but we currently have nothing in the works to allow applications to be built on top of our database.

9. Where do you see Tributes.com in 5 years? The newspaper business? In 5 years we hope to be ‘the’ national resource on the web for all obituary news with deep relationships with funeral homes throughout the country submitting their obituary information and re-selling our multi-media tributes products to their families. We expect to continue to see a steady decline in print newspapers and expect to see families more and more frequently seeking out national online distribution of their loved one’s obituary information to help them reach more family and friends as well as the features that online multi-media capabilities offer which allow them to truly tell and preserve the rich stories of their loved ones lives with unlimited text, pictures, music and video.

For those who still believe in PR, I hope you now get it. For 99.9% of the startups and companies out there, PR is not only a waste of money, it’s a waste of time.

This, of course, isn’t entirely the PR firms’ fault. They’re given an impossible task: deliver messages for companies that have more money than brains. When you’re being paid to shill for a startup that wants to establish “deep relationships with funeral homes throughout the country”, you sort of have to blast a press release out to D-list bloggers like moi. It’s your only hope.

And it really pays off. I wonder if mentions on AppScout, SvenOnTech and SociableBlog count as “media hits”?