Ah, what a great vacation that was. So relaxing. I can still hear the sounds of the waves crashing on the white, sandy beach, tropical birds singing their alluring songs in the lush forest behind me. I really meant to update the blog from my cabana, but the resort was having problems with their wireless intern– ah, who am I kidding? The muses just weren’t watching my back. I try to keep updates here interesting, and have to wait for inspiration instead of just picking a random topic out of a hat.

So I was listening to the always-entertaining Mobcast last week, and the guys got to talking about “staying on message” and I went through a series of emotions — first, excitement about the onslaught of inspiration. Then I grew very, very angry, remembering meetings about messaging and training game developers how to stay on message for hours and hours before trade shows and media tours. Then I laughed because my dog was trying to hump my other dog. Then I grew sleepy. And so the weekend passed, and I’m finally getting around to writing this post.

I don’t remember which of the handsome Mobcasters said it, but he cited an example of a PR rep being visibly upset during an interview in which some sports guy or developer just wouldn’t use the exact phrasing the PR team had decided on prior to the press event. Whether you see it or not, this happens all the time — PR reps around the world are probably about to blow a gasket at this very moment because their finely crafted corporate messages are being shredded by staff who — how dare they — just don’t get how important it is to executives.

Allow me to explain briefly for those unfamiliar with the concept of messaging: when a company is getting ready for any sort of press engagement — a product launch, trade show, media tour, press conference, investors meeting, etc. — the executives and the PR team — or the PR team alone — will sit down to come up with “key messages,” which will then be used to draft a guideline for responses to queries. These usually use very specific wording about a product’s features and why they’re important, the company’s stance on a controversial issue, corporate plans or any number of other topics. Straying from the exact wording often means not sticking to the message and is frowned upon.

Establishing key messages is an important part of any PR plan, and while it might seem like fiendish megacorporation territory, sticking to those key messages in most cases is also very important. Most importantly for those outside of the organization, it allows the product/company to maintain a consistent brand, so that consumers aren’t confused. I’ll invent a conveniently relevant scenario: imagine a movie studio promoting it’s latest film based on a Stephen King novel. In one interview the producer says the movie will be a suspenseful thriller. At a simultaneous press junket across the country an actor calls it a bone-chilling horror flick. If those people had both stuck to the message, the consumer who’s seen both interviews wouldn’t be confused. That’s a very simplified example, but I think you get the point.

When someone doesn’t stick to the message and an unapproved and often somewhat incorrect statement hits the enthusiast news scene, the PR team has to scramble to resolve the confusion. Maybe that person talked about a feature that hadn’t yet been announced — the always-awesome unintentional leak — and the execs need to start getting involved. Particularly in a publicly-traded company, the ramifications of someone straying from established messaging can be rather significant.

I’ve eschewed the virtues of messaging enough; it’s not all Skittles at the end of the tasty rainbow (what?). Most “corporate” companies — you know the ones, most commonly associated with fearlessly arrogant fancy-pants executives and utter inaccessibility — take “sticking to the message” to extremes. I’ve gone through email interviews written by game developers, for example, into which I’ve been urged by execs to insert more key messages to ensure the company’s brand is sufficiently represented. Whether we actually answered the question or not was, ultimately, irrelevant, as long as most of our company’s core philosophies, competencies and product features were presented at every single opportunity.

I think that if you have a good relationship with a journalist, you should feel comfortable straying from the company line once in a while, though (almost) never on major company issues that could cause harm. If those off-the-record comments make it to print, you’re screwed. In a trusting relationship, though, the journalist will appreciate the difference between something that is fair to print — a more subjective version of the message or a freely shared inside scoop — and a bit of knowledge that could cost someone their job.

Messaging won’t go away. I’m sorry, journalists, but if you’re in an interview with one of my clients, I hope they’re sticking to the message. They can have opinions, you guys can talk all day long about some unrelated topic… but as soon as you start asking questions about business practices, why our product is better than the competition or whatever, I want them to say what they’re supposed to say. If they stray from messaging and it’s wrong, I’ll speak up right there — I may ask you not to print something because it’s a feature we haven’t talked about. If you still print it, you’re a jerk. But then I have to deal with that. And I’ll probably be upset because some guy just couldn’t stick to the message.

It’s time for another entertaining installment of PR Shorts, our highly informative — if somewhat basic and embarrassingly infrequent — look at a particular aspect of this job we do. Today I’ll discuss the daunting task of pitching a journalist.

The last PR Short touched on the press release, a vital weapon in the PR rep’s arsenal. The press release, however, is ultimately a rather passive way to secure media coverage; yeah, you have to do some legwork with follow-ups, but you’re really just carpet-bombing media with a subject you hope they’ll find interesting. You’ll largely end up sitting at your desk, drinking coffee, updating your Corey Feldman fansite and waiting for responses and inquiries. The pitch, on the other hand, requires a different approach.

Be relevant

With a press release you can sometimes get away with topics that are only tangentially relevant to the writers receiving it — though it’s worth noting that you can quickly piss off even the most patient of journalists by constantly sending them irrelevant press releases. Your pitch, however, has to be highly relevant to the writer and the publication you’re pitching, or else you’re just going to a) not get the coverage, and b) look like an idiot.

Put yourself in the journalist’s shoes. Is the story you’re pitching actually interesting to the publication’s audience? Did you pitch the right person? It’s important to actually read past articles from the writer; don’t just assume that “Tech Writer” means the guy (or gal) is interested in every little tech story. Maybe even more importantly, read recent articles — the writer’s interests may have shifted, he may have been assigned a new beat, whatever. You can show that you’ve done your homework by citing a recent story from the journalist — this won’t guarantee coverage, but it’ll reduce your chances of looking like an idiot, and will also increase the chances that the writer will pass along your pitch to the right person if, by chance, the one you pitched isn’t interested.

Be concise

Alright, I’ve been guilty of channeling Tolstoy in my pitches, with an endless cascade of words I was sure would woo the writer into loving me — and by extension, the story I was pitching. Then I smartened up and realized that journalists, like me, don’t like reading novel-length emails. Get to the point — you can get your story idea across in a few sentences, and if a writer just isn’t interested, she’ll know within a few sentences.

It’s sometimes difficult to provide evidence that a story is compelling in such a short amount of time — particularly if you’re working with a relatively unknown company or product — but if you absolutely must include lengthy details, be sure to get your most important info out within the first paragraph. You can always provide more information later, but it takes years of training at imaginary schools I made up in my head to learn the telepathy skills necessary to force a journalist to read a crappy, long-winded pitch.

Be timely

There’s only a brief window in which a news story is interesting; once you’ve crossed that invisible line, you’re going to have an incredibly tough time getting useful coverage. Keep time lines in mind when you’re pitching — particularly if you’re working with print publications, you need to push your stories early to ensure that you have enough time to coordinate any interviews or product viewings, and to let the journalist actually write the story. If you sent out a press release two weeks ago about a product launch and only then start pitching writers on a related story, you’re not likely to get a bite. The perception of exclusivity — the notion that the writer is finding out about something before anyone else — will only help your cause, and even if it’s somewhat obvious that you’re simultaneously pitching multiple writers, the fact that you’re giving them some lead time will always be appreciated.

Be realistic

This is somewhat related to relevancy as cited above, but it bears repeating: you have to be realistic about your expectations. While you feel your story about — oh, I don’t know, your new underpants technology — may be relevant to the people who read Popular Science, is it realistic that you’ll get coverage? If you have a good story, pitch it; there’s no harm in that. But think about how realistic the odds of getting coverage are; if it was a long shot, don’t pester the writer and beg for reasons why the story wasn’t written.

Let’s take GOG.com — it’s an amazing site with the noble and ambitious mission of creating a DRM-free marketplace for digitally distributed games. I think that the very concept of the site is relevant to Wired, for example. I’ve pitched them, too. However, being realistic with my expectations, I anticipated that the writers there — who spend a lot of time talking to big-wigs at global industry players like Microsoft and Google — might not see things my way. While I was disappointed to fail in my quest for coverage, I didn’t cry about it. Instead, we’ve focused a lot of energy on more realistic media hits, and things have gone well. At some point in the future the situation may change, and I’ll revisit the idea of pitching Wired.

There’s certainly a lot more to be said about pitching, but these things are supposed to be short. Err… mission failed. If there are topics you’d like to see covered in future PR Shorts, just leave a comment, send me an email or hit me up on Twitter!

Just like any other day for a gaming journalist on staff at a major publication, I’d imagine. Situations like this make me appreciate reviewers so much more (oh, I loved you lots before… good save?) — it makes me happy that as a consumer, I get to choose which games I play — as I’m sure they have to slog through four or five over-hyped blockbusters for one great game to cross their desks. I can get caught up in hype just like anyone else, though, and reviewers — those with integrity, at least — help me decide which games are worth spending money on.

“Shortly after the review was published, I got called into my editor’s office. Turns out the PR rep hadn’t even bothered to call me to find out what was up with the score we gave her game. She went directly to the head of the publication, insisting that I clearly didn’t play the game (I did, rather more than I’d have liked to), like the genre (actually it’s one of my favorites), had something against the platform (what?), and more.”

The previously quoted journalist isn’t alone, of course, as there have been high-profile cases of situations similar to this one — the famous Gerstmanngate saga saw Eidos seemingly force out a prominent journalist at GameSpot over a ho-hum review of a generally-perceived-as-ho-hum game, Sony made a boo-boo by blacklisting Kotaku because it posted about Home before its official announcement without Sony’s approval, and while unproven (the game looks excellent) Eidos has found itself in hot water again with allegations of trading an exclusive review for a high review score. All of those cases, of course, ended up with bad PR for the company doing the strong-arming, but whatever, let’s hope they’ve learned from their mistakes. One of the primary jobs of a PR rep is to ensure that his or her client is portrayed in the media frequently and in a positive light. It’s natural for us to want to have some impact on the tone of coverage, but where does the influence stop?

Don’t get me wrong: we have to assert influence in the hopes of garnering positive coverage. That’s PR’s job. An anonymous account manager at a gaming PR agency explains it as such: “As an agency games publicist, it’s my responsibility to identify and communicate those elements of my client’s product that are going to get people excited… Big budget blockbuster games, however, are a different animal. When piles of advertising and marketing dollars are involved, the line tends to blur.” This certainly seemed to be the case in the Gerstmann-Eidos confrontation — Eidos was spending money at GameSpot, didn’t like a review and threatened to pull ads if the review wasn’t dealt with. In that situation, Eidos ultimately… uhh… won? with Gerstmann’s firing from the popular site (again, never mind the bad PR). It’s obviously a frightening suppression of editorial freedom when the ad money dictates coverage, tone and someone’s career path.

What about the situations like those of our journalist? Or selling review scores for exclusivity? Situations in which PR feels that they can dictate the tone of coverage or barter for a glowing review are just as scary. One would assume that journalists — whether editor-in-chief or intern — would have the integrity to deny such advances, but certainly when there’s a big-budget game or a megapublisher involved, the journalist has to consider the future — what if I don’t buy into this? Could this publisher get pissed off and refuse to work with me in the future? Are they going to pull ad money so I’ll get fired by some suit whom I’ve met once and who has no regular input into editorial coverage? As we all know, it doesn’t always work out well for the publisher — a lot of reporters and outlets aren’t willing to play ball, and the ensuing exposure will likely make the company regret its actions. But let me ask this — would publishers still be engaging in these strong-arm tactics if they didn’t work? Is there a time and a place to sit down at your desk, call up a journalist (or his editor) and yell for a few minutes?

Sean Ridgeley, Content Editor at Neoseeker.com, notes that, “the writer maintaining his voice is absolutely integral to journalism, particularly with it being such a competitive field. But there are occasions where we can be out of line, and it is here the rep should step in — if a superior has not, is unaware, or feels differently — and kindly work with the writer to achieve a more constructive tone and write-up, as flagrancy really doesn’t get anyone anywhere.” Of course there are a lot of different ways to go about achieving that more constructive tone, and the extent of the PR rep’s reaction is likely aligned with his passion for the project — or his boss’s passion for kicking his ass for a negative review. I’ve read a lot of mediocre reviews of projects I was working on and thought, “man, this writer is clearly didn’t play the game, doesn’t like the genre or has something against the platform! How dare she give it a 7! Everyone else is giving it 9s!” Do I just pick up the phone and go berserk on the journalist, though? Do I call her editor? Nah. But I will pick through that review and let her know about specific things she got wrong, lines that make it clear she has no idea what a strategy game is and question whether someone who previously claimed a dislike of PC games should really be reviewing the game.

I’ve had reviews removed from sites for factual errors, and I’ve had outlets print retractions or adjustments because a reviewer hadn’t spent adequate time with a game to learn all of its features. After all, as PR reps we have to ensure that journalists give our games a fair shake. Our PR rep says, “I worked on a PC title called Desperate Housewives: The Game, which at its heart was a really well-designed, Sims-like game with engaging story-driven gameplay. We were targeting a more mature female demographic, highlighting features such as story, casual gameplay elements, and ease of play. Without someone to champion the development team’s gameplay and feature set decisions, would a game like Desperate Housewives stand a chance of getting a fair review among those who typically write reviews for young men? Would it have even gotten reviewed at all?”

That’s where PR’s real role lies, as Ridgeley explains: “My ideal PR rep is one who acts purely as a mediator between publisher, developer and the journalist; their job should not be to “manage review scores,” but to assist in seeing the most informed content possible published, regardless of whether or not the journalist agrees with everything they’ve been provided with. This is not a negative thing; it’s best to include as many views as possible in any piece of journalism, I believe, so as to include as many possible readers in the discussion, directly or indirectly. And like the rep, this is the role of the journalist, likewise: to strive for the most informed and honest work he can.”

Our journalist could have had to write some sort of retraction in the next issue. He could have been fired. Thankfully, he works for people with integrity. “To my editor’s credit, he laid out what he’d been told, listened to my refutation of the bullshit and my points in support of my negative review, and said he’d take care of it. As pissed off as I was at the PR rep – being told that you are a lazy liar who sucks at your job is never terribly pleasant – I felt vindicated by my editor’s response.” It doesn’t always work out in the PR rep’s favor, even if the complaining doesn’t make front-page news.

I’ve also been urged strongly to bitch at some journalist or another for a review I couldn’t really disagree with. In those situations, I’m the one who has to show integrity — I can argue to my client or boss (I’ve had both yell at me about reviews) about the facts, explaining how they’re being just a bit too blinded by their investment in the game to realize that some people do have opinions that differ from their own.

For all of this to work, the respect has to flow both ways. Publishers and PR reps should never try to put unjust pressure on journalists. Meanwhile, journalists should strive to be fair in their coverage of games. However, in the end, we have to go back to the way the hype machine works in this industry — publishers control the games and the assets, and as long as outlets rely on access to those assets, coverage will be bartered and will ultimately favor those with the most with which to barter.

Urban Dictionary lists the following:
bullshot: n. A screenshot fabricated by a company to misrepresent the graphics of a game; a combination of the words bullshit and screenshot.

Seems Penny Arcade coined the phrase (shit, seriously, 2005? Seems like just yesterday), but the actual practice of “creating” screenshots has been around for ages; it’s become more prevalent in recent years, as the visual quality of games has increased alongside consumer expectations. If you want to see some examples and some more insight into bullshots, you can check out Blake Snow’s piece at GamePro.com. Forget that clown, though (*blowing a kiss to Blake*) — I’m the star here! Let’s take a quick look at bullshots, shall we? More after the jump.

What happens?
Throughout a game’s PR and marketing campaign, the publisher or developer needs to create promotional screenshots to show off a game’s visuals. It’s important to note that the final polishing of a game — those extra steps that take the game to final quality — often isn’t done until the last few months of the project. That will vary, of course, from one game to another, as some teams may aim to be “art complete” much earlier in development. Anyway, these shots will usually be created with whatever game content is available — so if a game is being announced two years before its release date, there’s a good chance that the aforementioned game content is not final, only partially available or completely non-existent.

Trust me, from the PR and marketing rep standpoint — unless you’re a soulless bastard — this whole process is a bit unnerving. It makes me feel more than a little slimy… like I just ate twelve Big Macs and pigged out on Doritos while playing Fallout 3 for ten hours straight (not necessarily professing my love for any of those three things… they’re just examples of the greasiness, people). I much prefer the idea of actually capturing images from a final product and presenting them as-is. I remember working on Neverwinter Nights, creating my own levels in the toolset and snapping off hundreds (thousands?) of screenshots throughout the promo campaign. We’d pick the best ones, they’d get routed through approvals, and everything was great — we’d just toss out the shots with screwy shadows, weird textures, characters stuck in the walls, etc.

Things just aren’t that easy anymore. Advancing technology dictates that games take more manpower to develop and that dev teams usually have to work with tighter timelines. You’re constantly tweaking artwork, textures, lighting, etc. so taking a perfect screenshot a year before release is pretty much a pipe dream. So again, you take what you can get — maybe you only have a few characters finished, while the levels aren’t close to finished yet. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a good vertical-slice demo (essentially a small “slice” of the game representing its final game quality). In that very awesome case, you have at least a small area — with just a couple of characters/enemies and a few rooms in the level — to work with, merrily snapping screenshots and having to make minimal adjustments. But in other cases, you do the best you can. If lighting isn’t final, an artist has to go in and paint the lighting and shadows. If visual effects like explosions aren’t implemented yet, you have an artist add the explosions.

Why does it happen?
It seems like the most nefarious consumer-deception tactic around: Megapublisher A comes out and announces Big Shooter X from Big Studio Y, says it will be the best-looking game around in 18 months and releases “screenshots” to back it up… but they won’t show off a gameplay video for another six months. They won’t demo the game to press for another year. The screenshots are a vision of what they hope to deliver, and are meant to excite the masses.

Thus we come to the reason for bullshots’ existence: customer, shareholder and retailer) expectations. The very nature of video game PR and marketing is somewhat fucked. There are few other industries that push product visibility for such a long period of time; there’s really very little chance that a game announced two years before release will be unveiled with assets that weren’t somehow custom-produced for that particular opportunity. That being said, fans expect screenshots to be awesome… and I’m not trying to point fingers and call gamers jerks, because I do it, too. If I see a screenshot, I expect it to look cool, or else I’ll probably lose interest in that game. So let’s say a publisher takes the honest route and releases a screenshot of an in-development game without doctoring it. Imagine the outcry. NeoGAF would explode with cries of, “hahah, what a piece of shit!” Other hardcore fans would laugh at the lack of anti-aliasing. Yet others would ridicule the terrible facial expressions. Or the missing texture on the floor. You get the picture.

Companies want to create hype for their products, and unless they come out of the gate with awesome assets, they’re going to be fighting a long, uphill battle to achieve popularity or to get enough page views at GameSpot (or wherever) to warrant continued coverage. Ultimately, fans don’t seem to care if shots have been doctored. There may be some outcry early on in the publicity campaign (Killzone 2, anyone?), but in the end, all will be forgotten and a game will be left to cement its own legacy.

Anything we can do about it?
Yeah, not sure. I’d love to get to the point where we’re not announcing games too far in advance. Case in point: I was part of the effort to announce Dragon Age at E3 back in 2004. Sure, there was a big media blackout for a while, but that game has been in the public eye for five years already, and fans have expected a constant flow of assets — screenshots, videos, previews, etc. How could BioWare’s product five years ago possibly have represented the final quality of the game? Apart from a few rare cases, do you know of any movies that have been talked about for five years? How about two years? A year? We’re somewhat idiotic in this industry, though, having established long ago that we absolutely can’t have successful products without building up months or years of hype.

Could we get by with the Hollywood model? Could we feasibly just give fans minor details — talk about the people involved in the project, share the overall vision, toss out some concept art — and save the major hype for the two or three months before release? Could we skip the crazy spending in the year leading up to release, removing presence at trade shows, cutting out the trailer budget during that time, and saving it all for a big publicity and ad push at release? I think so, but it’s going to take one ambitious and daring genius to change the way the entire gaming publicity machine has worked for the past twenty years. Think about it: we’d be able to say goodbye to release delays; while you’d obviously need to provide a general timeframe for shareholders, it’d be much easier to say, “here’s the first trailer, and the game is coming out in three months!” than predicting a specific release date in advance. All assets would be final — sure, you might get ten trailers in that month, but as a fan you’d have a guarantee that all videos and screenshots are representative of the final game. For publishers, you could condense all of that spending into one huge push — how much TV time could you buy for the cost of an E3 booth?

It seems like it would work out well for everyone. But are things going to change anytime soon? Probably not. So deal with it, and enjoy all the bullshots you’ll be fed this year! They’re sure to be tasty.

Thoughts? Got a major beef with bullshots? Don’t care either way?

He's sipping a cappuccino. How adorable.

It’s no secret — me likey pork. Whether in chop form, thicker chop form, bacon, ham, you name it — I’ll probably enjoy it. But now this whole swine flu thing is giving pigs a bad rap. Now, nevermind kooky theories that this flu may be some zombie version of the 1918 Spanish flu that nearly toppled Europe, but it’s about time for pigs to hire a PR agency or some marketing consultants to sort this whole thing out.

We, as marketers, spin things in our favor; it’s really just a matter of trying to even the playing field. Pigs have always been in a tight spot: they’re widely considered to be filthy animals, there are entire ethnic /religious groups that look past the deliciousness quotient and refuse to even eat their flesh, and now they’re being associated with something entirely sinister that could bring the civilized world — including pig-abstainers — to its knees.

Pigs — with the assistance of communicators — could do a few things in this situation:

Distance themselves from the subject – A simple press release claiming no known connection to the illness would do some good. At least the news stories would be more “Swine Decline Ties to Flu” than “People Dying of Swine Flu.”

Blame someone else – This could fall right into that press release. Lay the blame on the birds — after all, they’ve been known to cause flus, too. Or say it’s SARS 2. Blaming terrorists or the economy could also work.

Rename the illness to something hip and/or delicious - This clever little marketing trick might come alongside a full-scale re-branding effort. Here you could actually try to boost consumer demand for the disease by calling it something like “Xtreme Baconation” and going on a big press tour with the Jonas Brothers (do they eat bacon? I don’t know). The kids would eat it up. YUM.

Make an iPhone app – Why not, right?

Open a Twitter account - Why not, right?

Limit supply – You could pull a Palm and limit supply of this Xtreme Baconation, again driving demand. “Where can I get it?” people will ask, and you’ll say, “sorry, all out.” Eh? Sounds pretty sweet.

Those are really just a few of the tools at the disposal of the pigs. By combining these tactics in a comprehensive marketing plan, they may soon see us eating more pigs, wearing pig hats, lining up outside the Swine Store and more. If any Elder Swine are reading this, holla atcha boy – I need some work.

UPDATE: It seems the fine folks at the World Health Organization read this blog and have decided to rename this horrible swine flu to something less offensive to the porky population. Now dubbed H1N1 influenza A, this illness is surely not going to get the headlines it did with the bacon connection.