Ugly Christmas pitches
They only come around once a year.
The holidays are about spending time with loved ones, not sending bad op-ed pitches.
Unfortunately, holidays and major events seem to attract them. Agencies love to supply clients with “content calendars" of upcoming events and propose media coverage opportunities related to them. This ends up creating pressure to deliver that coverage when the time comes, and results in many pitches trying really hard to demonstrate how they’re relevant to the holiday or event.
Christmas isn't a great time to talk about shipping, but this week’s pitch wants to make that connection. It fails. In the end, it portrays a client a little over-eager to hawk their own product.
Read on the pitch, as well as my analysis.
Pitch me!
If you’re interested in submitting a pitch for review, reply to this email or send it to jake@getopinioned.com. If I select it, I’ll evaluate it in this newsletter at no cost. (I’m happy to omit any identifying information from the pitch.)
The Pitch
Hi [editor],
Happy holidays! I hope you’re able to celebrate with friends and family this year.
I wanted to send your way an op-ed on why holiday shipping creates a huge amount of plastic packaging waste, and how switching to paper would help solve this problem.
[Paper company executive] writes in the attached piece that in order to curb plastic waste, shippers should use way more paper in their packaging than plastic. In addition, consumers should demand that shippers incorporate more paper into their packaging, especially for small shipments
Making the switch will bring a host of benefits. It will align shippers’ practices with climate change efforts, reduce plastic usage internationally by 13% percent, cut down on marine plastics pollution, and reduce landfill waste by 11% over a ten-year period.
There are plenty of paper shipping alternatives available to help facilitate this transition. Companies are springing up left and right to meet consumers’ demand for better packaging more aligned with their values. Gen Z in particular has been agitating for such changes, and shippers would be remiss to ignore their desires.
I hope this is the right fit for your publication.
Best, [PR rep]
Note: This pitch was written by me for educational purposes.
The Stitches
Don’t clog the top!
The first issue is that the pitcher takes up way too much space at the top with a friendly intro. I hate to discourage congeniality, but keep in mind that editors are skimming these very quickly. They want as much relevant information as possible at the tippy top of your email.
I never considered it rude if someone pitching me didn’t open with pleasantries. I actually appreciated it, because I knew they were being considerate of my time by giving me what I needed as quickly as possible.
Just throw a “Happy holidays!” in your sign-off.
Annual events are not that interesting
It's possible that not all editors feel this way, but I generally yawned when I got a pitch tied to some sort of annual event or holiday.
It can sometimes work, but only if the pitch is interesting on its own, independent of the event.
If a news outlet deems an event or holiday sufficiently interesting for its readers, they are planning out stories in advance to publish in the run-up to it. They'll have top 10 lists, previews, etc. They'll also likely be reaching out to experts in their orbit to write commentaries. This means you'll have a fairly high bar to clear.
There are always caveats. If you really feel confident that you have a compelling angle, and it is naturally related to the event, then pitch away. In this case, outlets will be happy to receive it. But just make sure that you've been honest with yourself about whether you’ve fulfilled those criteria.
Have I heard this before?
If your pitch is merely making a generally understood argument, albeit in a different form than how it’s usually presented, you're not doing much to teach people something new or break conventional wisdom. And that means an editor is going to be less interested in what you've offered.
Everyone knows plastic is bad. We've all heard it a million times.
This pitch boils down to: plastic is bad, and paper is a better alternative. Sure, it's about shipping and climate change. But ultimately, readers are going to take away the core message that plastic is bad.
The pitch does a good job of tightly summarizing its thesis argument. But it just doesn’t catch my interest. It basically says what I would expect it to say, especially coming from the executive at a paper company.
Your goal should be to surprise the editor.
Dude, subscribe to Pitches Get Stitches!
A hollow demand
Writing “consumers should demand” better packaging won’t actually make that happen. That’s because it’s so vague that it’s almost meaningless.
Sure, it’s a fine aspiration. But it doesn't actually explain how we get to that point.
Who are these “consumers” that you're talking about? It's okay to talk about consumers as a broad category, but if you're saying that they should do something, you need to narrow your focus. The category of “consumers” is so broad it could encompass hundreds of millions of people, even more if we’re talking internationally. Is the pitch really suggesting an action to be taken by that many people, in concert?
Also, what does the pitcher mean by "demand"? Who should consumers make this demand to, exactly? How should they communicate that demand? What, precisely, are they demanding? Again, the vagueness makes the recommendation sound empty, like a throwaway idea that isn't very important to the author.
Such writing is far too common in op-eds. I wish it weren’t!
Generational generalization
Generalizing about generations is bad. That’s true of a lot of generalizations, but this one in particular deserves particular attention.
Generational identification and conflict has become an extremely popular media theme in recent years. Readers love these because they make them feel part of a larger group—or separate from a group they’re not a part of.
Jumping on this trend isn't a bad idea, but discussing what a generation wants or feels without any real evidence to back it up is a major faux pas. In this case, exhorting shippers (and again, generalizing about all shippers isn't a good idea) to listen to Gen Z (generalizing again) just looks like you’re shoehorning in a generational theme.
It also looks lazy. It's become cliché to say that Gen Z makes buying decisions based on the reputation of the seller more so than other generations. Even if that's true, you'll need to refer to some data. But better to avoid it altogether, since such clichéd wisdom looks unimpressive at best and tone-deaf at worst.
I’m Jake Meth, founder of Opinioned, a consulting firm that helps thought leaders publish op-eds in top media. Previously, I built and edited Fortune’s opinion section. I’ve worked in journalism and communications for 15 years.
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