Friend and uber-flack Peter Shankman (professional, personal, unfortunate headshot) is more of a “pure” PR guy than me — he manages to get great media hits for everything from porn distributors to yarnmakers.

Peter’s good, but he also has interesting products and services to pitch to the media. What happens when your product isn’t buzzworthy?

James Archer has some thoughts. And they’re good ones.

James makes several points and it’s a short read — so go read it. The closing graph even has some takeaway for those who market themselves, not just products:

Above all, remember to be fascinating. If your product or service is boring in itself, then it’s up to you — yes, you personally — to be amazing. Everyone can do it, you just have to be the one who actually follows through with it.

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More than a year ago, I came across Chiristopher Allen’s solid analysis of several social networking sites and bookmarked it; I re-read it today while cleaning out my bookmarks (a singularly post-modern, 21st century drudgery) and pretty much everything he wrote still holds true.

I use LinkedIn (profile here, although I doubt you can view it unless you’re a member), and the basic Cocktail Party Rule applies: If you are polite and know how to gently work a room, you can make some spectacularly useful contacts; if you wander around like a bull in a china shop wondering how many people you can “sell,” then you’re not going to get too far.

On LinkedIn, as with online dating sites and every AOL chatroom ever created, it might be the meek who inherit the earth, but the communicators are going to end up owning the internet.

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Colin turned my tale of Kinko’s joy into a blog post.

I’d feel left out of my own party if I didn’t link to it.

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I sometimes think I shouldn’t have original thoughts in this forum at all (and, yes, there are those who argue that I don’t!), but, rather, should just point people to the wisdom over at Crossroads Dispatches.

Evelyn makes a big, big point about sales and marketing with a simple analogy:

I have noted time and time again that most marketing and sales professionals take on the role of a beggar more often than not.It’s a pitiful sight. They are frantically running up and down the beach jumping up and down waving dim-bulbed flashlights hoping beyond hope that any passing ship will notice them and take refuge.

Meanwhile the lighthouse around the bend on the point isn’t killing itself (not to mention not embarrassing itself) to attract ships whatsoever. The ships are proactively seeking the lighthouse of their own accord. If there is a new lighthouse, the sailors spread the word. It’s on their maps. They knew where they are.

Read more …

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Colin has such a great post on the importance of personalization during the pitch that there’s not much for me to add.

Go read it, and follow the great links.

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One question we’re increasingly asking clients up front — particularly in the public sector — is a very basic one indeed: How serious are you?

In public involvement, there’s a large continuum between “window-dressing” projects (those designed more to publicize a predetermined program than to gather input) and the intense engagements that can really affect policy and planning. We’ve done both types of projects (although we prefer the latter), but the biggest key to executing without missteps is the same: Figure out the project owner’s level of commitment up front.

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