For Jonah Bloom, executive editor of Crain Communications'
Advertising Age, pitching a garden-variety ad campaign no longer
cuts it. With increasing amounts of media clutter, "it's hard to
get excited by a big marketer doing any old ad campaign," says
Bloom, who was recruited by Crain in 2002. Bloom helped to launch
PR Week in 1998 as news editor and went on to become editor in
chief. "I'm really looking for new and different ideas and
[marketing] campaigns that are innovative."
Bloom helps to run the day-to-day operation at Ad Age
(80,000-circ) and also frequently contributes Op-Ed columns to the
weekly trade magazine, long considered the bible of consumer
advertising and marketing coverage. Bloom, a U.K. native who has
covered all facets of the media, including a stint in the mid-1990s
as magazine editor of the weekly Press Gazette in London, still has
his eyes and ears peeled on PR trends. "I'm interested in consumer
marketing and PR," he says. "I'm not interested in b-to-b
[marketing] or corporate affairs or IR, particularly. I want to
know about ways in which people are getting new products into the
marketplace and building buzz around products."
Bloom's Bugaboos:
- Lies, of the uncomplicated variety. Bloom says he's on the
receiving end of out-and-out lies at least twice a month. "We're
not talking about a tonal difference, unavoidable answers or
something that [the PR contact or source] can't talk about, but
categorical lies," Bloom says. Lying is not only a "relationship
breaker, but it is sad that it should have to come to that." He
says the same way PR people expect journalists to report
information accurately and fairly, so, too, do journalists expect
the same treatment from PR execs. - Presumptuous e-mails. Bloom gets sent his share of e-mails that
assume the story being pitched is as good to go. "They pitch [the
story] as a fait accompli, which shows a total absence of knowledge
of what journalists do," Bloom says. Any PR exec worth his or her
salt "should know that getting into just any publication isn't
necessarily getting [the pitch] right." For Ad Age, writing stories
based solely on press releases is verboten. "Call me up to offer
some comments about trends or give me the germ of a story," Bloom
says. Without any preconditions, he adds, "Ask me if I'd like to
chat with so-and-so" about a story suitable for Ad Age readers,
many of them brand managers, chief marketing officers of Fortune
500 companies and ad agency execs. - Little to no homework. Bloom also gets calls from PR people
"who demonstrate no knowledge whatsoever of what we're about," he
says. To cite an example, he refers to a recent call he got from an
environmental organization pitching a story on one of its new ad
campaigns. "If you ever read Ad Age in the last 10 years you would
know that such coverage is a rarity for us," Bloom says. What's
more, considering Ad Age's laser-like focus on consumer marketing
it's unlikely the publication is going to run stories on ad
campaigns largely driven by charitable - rather than business -
endeavors.
What works
In a 24/7 media climate, executive editors like Bloom are
extremely crunched for time. So keep it simple. "I'm pretty busy,
so send me an e-mail with a subject line I understand and two lines
of copy that tells me what you want and why you want it. Make it as
brief as possible," Bloom says, adding, "When that happens, I'm not
offended when, two days later, I get an e-mail again asking if I'm
interested, yes or no."
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