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Why Spam PR Pitches Won’t Go Away

09.08.20

Yesterday morning I received an email pitch. Nothing particularly exciting about that; it wasn’t the first pitch I received yesterday and it certainly wasn’t the last. It wasn’t tailored and it wasn’t addressed to me but it was on topic. I noted that it was for an ebook on social media marketing and set it aside to read properly later.

Spam

Very quickly, though, I began to see replies to that pitch. And then more replies. They kept coming. As it turns out, the sender of the pitch had created a mailing list and had emailed that list using the ‘To’ field in the address bar.

Over the next eight hours, I received 27 replies to the original email from people on the list. People who, apparently, like the ‘Reply All’ button (which, I think, should have an “are you sure” prompt when you use it). Emails getting increasingly irate at the original sender. Emails from well-known social media types like Mike Driehorst, Jennifer Leggio, Om Malik and Francine Hardaway. Emails from reporters at the WSJ, at AdAge, at AP and Newsweek. To make matters worse, everyone began getting copied on support tickets about the removal requests.

Emails after a spam pitch

All told, we received 45 emails over an 8-hour period.

Spray and pray worked

One telling point, however? The first reply in the email chain was from someone who wanted to review the book. So was the fourth, which raised the possibility of a Blog Herald review.

Sadly, spray and pray was getting results. From a short-term perspective, the spammy pitch may have actually worked. It got two responses. Perhaps, were it not for the mailing list disaster, it might have received a few more.

In the long-term, however, the pitch did nothing to impress those of us on the list who viewed it as spam. It built no relationships and it certainly destroyed plenty (numerous people noted they have blacklisted the sender).

This is part of the volume/customization trade-off that PR people face. Some agencies will continue along this path – despite the people they alienate, they will land coverage for their client.

Other agencies (ours included) will choose to take a more targeted approach. We’ll pitch less people, choose our targets and personalize our approaches. We’ll aim for a high return from a smaller number of pitches.

Like it or not, both tailored and spray-and-pray approaches can work. However, one of them builds relationships in the process while the other damages them. I choose the former.

What do you think?

Posted in: blogger relations, communications, pitching, pr, public relations

Tags: communications, pitching, pr, public relations, spam

27Comments

Public Relations People And Bloggers Can Work Together

09.07.15

Blogger relations is not a win/lose tactic Marketing Vox featured a thought-provoking post yesterday entitled “PR Blackout Challenges Mom Bloggers to Return to Basics.” To boil the post down, it summarizes a call by mommy blogger community MomDot for a PR blackout this August. As they put it:

“…our site, and many others, are inundated with hundreds, if not thousands, of product requests each year resulting in massive obligations and deadline stress equivalent to what the General Motors CEO must feel every time he drives into work.”

I reacted fairly strongly to the post. Not because I disagree with the idea of a week without PR-pitched products, but because it appears the situation for some people has deteriorated to the point where this kind of statement is necessary. Blogger relations shouldn’t be a win/lose game.

While the post does make a point of highlighting the work done by those at the other end of the public relations scale – those who do their jobs properly – the impact of the others is worrying, and once again casts a shadow over all of us.

Two aspects to this make me uncomfortable:

Public relations people shouldn’t pressure bloggers

I’ve written plenty of times about my thoughts on how to – and how not to – go about approaching bloggers. While my thoughts have evolved over time, one thing remains consistent: public relations people need to look beyond their own objectives and consider the other side. As I wrote to Stefania Butler in a Twitter conversation about the post (which you can check out here), good PR people should marry both sides of the equation by matching the vested interest of the client with the needs and wants of the recipients of pitches.

How do you do that? You build relationships. You don’t do it by spamming people. You certainly don’t do it by creating obligations and pressure for people who may be doing this for a hobby.

A few pointers for PR people:

Build relationships with the key bloggers you’re looking to reach (I agree with Beth Blecherman on this one)
Don’t spam people. With the first point in mind, find a balance between volume and customization.
Aim to help bloggers, rather than use them. This doesn’t mean fogetting your client’s objectives; it means finding a balance between the two.

Bloggers have a choice

Unless you make an income from your blog’s traffic (which I have nothing against) or post on a group blog on a schedule with others, there’s little to force you to adhere to others’ timelines (there are likely other cases too). These are valid pressures, but I highly doubt they cover the majority of mom bloggers. In most cases, bloggers can choose whether to write about public relations pitches or not. What’s more, they have control of the deadlines they write under.

With the exception of the cases above, you should feel free to publish under your own deadlines. If something comes up, or you don’t have time, or you just feel like taking a day off writing, then don’t post that day. The idea that bloggers are under “massive obligations” indicates a situation that requires fixing, and while we can (and I will) advocate against bad PR practices, bloggers have to take some of the initiative themselves to avoid putting themselves under this kind of pressure.

So, to mommy bloggers, I offer the following advice (and pleas):

If a PR person who pitches you pressures you, or does anything other than work with you, let them know you’re not comfortable with it. If they don’t, hit “delete.” If they continue, hit “spam.”
If you are putting yourself under pressure, ask yourself if it is necessary. What can you do to reduce it?
Remember: We’re not all like the bad apples.
Without doing anything onerous (because the onus should be on communicators to do their research), consider creating pitching tips or, as Butler has done via her blog categories, collect posts you’ve written relating to outreach together.

I’m not just a PR guy – I’m also a blogger. I receive plenty of bad pitches too. The fault usually falls on the side of the person pitching, and they need to get their act together. Still, if you feel pressured by PR people, there are things you can do too, if you choose to. The alternative is resorting to negative pressure – the same approach that upset you in the first place.

What do you think? I’ve had some fascinating conversations on Twitter about this, but I’d love to hear from people on both sides of the fence on this one.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Update: CNET has a slightly different take on this issue here.

Posted in: blogger relations, pitching

Tags: blogger relations, mom bloggers, mommy bloggers, pitching

62Comments

The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off

09.06.29

The trade-off between volume and personalization is an ever-present dilemma in public relations. If, as I do, you subscribe to the notion that one of the best ways to build loyalty is to develop a relationship with people, then you’ve likely hit the point where you have to make a trade-off between the number of people you can engage with and the quality of those interactions.

A couple of weeks ago I received a pitch about the upcoming launch of Gary Vaynerchuk’s first book. The pitch wasn’t fantastic, but as I’ve followed Gary’s activities for a while and it was well enough targeted, I replied and moved on. Fast forward to this weekend, when I read an interesting post by John Cass about a similar (not identical) pitch that he received. Reading the comments (those on the original post and the re-post on Social Media Today are all worth reading), I started to really think about the optimum point along the scale/personalization continuum when it comes to pitching.

Volume/personalization extremes

Purists will tell you that you need to read 10-20 posts or stories from each person you pitch, and that you should completely tailor every pitch you issue. Meanwhile, some other people will argue that by reaching a large volume of people with your pitch, the law of averages says you will connect with enough people who do care that you will come out ahead.

I’d argue that there are downsides to both extreme, although I still favour one side over the other.

I’ve written before about some of the issues involved with personalized blogger relations. The primary one, of course, is time. Even if you take just a minute or two per post you read, that time adds up quickly. To then tailor personalized emails takes more time. When you work for an agency, the process can quickly chew through your client’s budget.

Once you get to the kind of numbers that Gary mentions in his comments on John’s post, you’re talking astronomical amounts of time. That limits this approach to a very small number of recipients.

This brings us to the other extreme – mass communications. This is the approach that relies on building a large list, emailing out a standard (or mail-merged) email to that list and letting the law of averages do its work. Sure, you may annoy some people but you’ll also hit other people who will take the action you’re after. This is the “email marketing” form of pitching – the collision of the two tactics.

Is the sweet spot in the middle ground?

In an ideal world, every company would take the former approach. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that wonderful place – time is tight, budgets are tighter and we need to deliver results for our clients and bosses with less resources than we would like to have.

I wonder if the ideal solution, as with so many dilemmas, is somewhere in the middle.

The chart above shows roughly how I view the dilemma. At the top-left of the curve, you have the idealists who say you should completely tailor every word of every pitch you send out. Small, highly-targeted outreach also fits into this part of the curve. At the opposite end of the chart, you have the spammers who pitch massive numbers of people with the same message. They’re easy to spot – they’re the ones where you’re bcc’d, with no salutation or a “Dear Blogger.” They often lead with the words “For Immediate Release.”

I’ve worked for clients where their only targets are one or two highly influential blogs, and in that case you can function over at the top-left of the curve. However, unless your target audience is an extremely small number of sites (or their readers), you may need to make some compromises.

Still, I am strongly (and often vocally) against untargeted spam pitches that hit everyone with the same email. Note that the potential “sweet spot” I suggest sits closer to the tailored, low-volume end of the scale than the other. Critically, it sits above the tipping point where the volume reaches the point where significantly less personalization is possible.

The reality of the “sweet spot”

In this sweet spot, for a new client:

You research the targets of your pitches – you read their stories or their websites;
You create a pitch template covering the key points you wish to communicate;
You tailor that template for every person you pitch;
- That personalization includes, but isn’t limited to:
  - The medium you use to pitch them (if that information is available)
  - Your greeting
  - Your opening paragraph
  - The points on which you choose to focus
  - The supporting collateral you offer – do they lean towards video? Images? Interviews?
You keep some less-critical parts of the email the same, to save time and budget.

Time changes things

I say “for a new client” above because, as time goes on, I believe the line in the chart moves up – as you get to know the market and the media in that market better, you can reach more of them more effectively in less time, meaning more personalization, less time required and better use of resources.

Having worked on some accounts for a while now, I can reel-off the names of key journalists, how they like to be contacted, when the best times are to reach them and the types of information they like, without even needing notes. That makes the pitching process more cost-effective as time goes on – meaning the line in the chart has moved way up the Y axis.

Your thoughts?

I’m curious as to your thoughts. Does this click with the challenges you face?

Let me know what you think – I’d love to hear your feedback.

Posted in: blogger relations, media relations, pitching, pr, public relations

Tags: blogger relations, media relations, pitching, pr, public relations, spam

15Comments

Rethinking “Influencers”

09.05.20

Who are the influencers in your market? Are they the top-of-mind attention grabbers, are they the lower-profile up-and-comers, or are they the long tail, the people with relatively few readers but who make up a good chunk of pages 2+ in Google’s search results and who, in time, could develop a sizeable following?

I ask because I’ve had a couple of conversations recently that have made me reconsider who I look at as “influencers” in client markets recently.

What’s an “influencer?”

I’ve always defined “influencers” quite narrowly. I’ve thought of them as the people who, when they speak on their key topic, make others sit up and take notice. I tend to define that group narrowly based on criteria like engagement, traffic, on-topic posts and so on.

I’ve started to wonder if I’m defining that group too narrowly. What about the people who have built up communities around their brand – people who are engaged in whatever that person writes about (for example Brogan who, despite his modesty, gets a lot of outreach because his voice online is LOUD)? What about the people who don’t have a large readership or engaged community yet, but who are starting out and may develop that in future? Do you consider them influencers in your market or not?

Finite resources

One concern with defining a list of influencers too widely is that your resources are finite. You can define a core group of 20 or 200 influencers, but as the group grows, so the attention you can devote to each one diminishes.

If you define your group too narrowly you risk getting lost in the ever increasing noise out there. If, however, you define it too broadly then you become incapable of building the relationships you need with those people. Where’s the line?

If you think strategically, the answer to those questions depends on your objectives. Your goals for your communications, and the measurements you use to define success, will affect how you define your audiences and, through that, your “influencers.” If your objectives change, so may your approach to defining that group.

Despite those in social media who may say otherwise, when you get back to basics it’s a numbers game – your client needs to generate a profit. You need to meet your targets, whatever they are. How you reach those numbers can differ – though relationships with a few key influencers or a network of quieter voices. Still, the numbers never go away.

What do you think? Have you tended to lean one way or the other on this spectrum? How have you approached this in the past?

Image credit: Oranje

Posted in: blogger relations, social media

Tags: blogger relations, influencer, outreach, social media

7Comments

Rethinking Blogger Relations

09.02.03

ROI Is blogger relations worth it? Is the ROI sufficient to justify the investment?

I’ve written a few times in the past about blogger relations, from a range of angles – from the tactic in general to the practicalities of pitching bloggers to the results from a blogger’s perspective. However, I recently got to thinking about it in a different way.

I think it’s important to continually question what we’re doing – it’s the only way we’ll continue to improve over time. With that in mind, I got to thinking about whether blogger relations is really worth the investment in time and money necessary to do it well.

A little context

Here’s the issue: most people in the social media fishbowl, including me, will advocate a take-it-slow approach to engaging in social media. My preferred approach has three broad steps:

Listen
Engage
Develop

For this to work, you need to put in a substantial amount of time up-front. That time is spent monitoring what’s going on, identifying influencers, measuring and analyzing trends and getting to know peoples’ preferences.

From an agency perspective, that can be a considerable investment up-front before you even begin to engage.

When you do begin to engage, blogger relations best practices (take Todd Defren’s blogger relations bookmark for example) require continued time-intensive work in both pitching and engagement.

Is that investment worth it?

Sure there are the TechCrunches, the Mashables and the ReadWriteWebs. However, most bloggers don’t have those audiences. Most bloggers don’t have a tenth or even a hundredth of that audience.

Given those low audience numbers, does the investment in time required for good blogger relations give the necessary pay-off?

A few arguments

Even setting aside the impact of corporate culture, there are a few factors to consider:

Initial time: If you add up the time you need to invest to get to know a blogger, engage with them before pitching, then tailor a pitch to that blogger, you’re probably looking at least an hour or two per blogger, if not more.
Future time: Of course, once you’ve done the groundwork, the incremental time investment will be lower for future pitches.
Relationships: Established relationships have greater value than immediate outreach – future issues management, for example.
Search engines: Online content with a positive tone can help build companies’ reputations through Google search results.
Long tail: Audience size can be much bigger than stated reader numbers – the long tail of online content can be large over time.
Research: If you offer a product or service where purchase is research-based and you’re not engaging, then people are making decisions on purchases based on everyone’s voice but your own.
More than pitching: Blogger relations encompases more than just proactive pitching – it can also include both reactive engagement with people who talk about your product, company or industry. I’ve argued before that customer service is public relations; nowhere is this more true than online.

Conclusion

My conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that it is worth the investment.

One thing to remember is that traditional media relations takes time, too, if done right. Researching reporters, tailoring your pitch, etc takes time while reporters for mainstream outlets are, in my experience, less likely to write about the story than relevant bloggers may be. What’s more, the long-term effects of building relationships with relevant people (both online and offline) can be substantial.

So, yes – the time investment is substantial, but so are the benefits – better relationships, more coverage, better coverage, SEO, customer service improvements and more. Still, the required investment makes measurement and analysis of results all the more important, which is why we’re putting a lot of effort into that right now.

What do you think? Is the ROI on blogger relations worth it?

Posted in: blogger relations, blogging, media relations, public relations

Tags: bloggerrelations, customerservice, ROI

18Comments

Anatomy of a Bad Pitch

08.09.30

Photo of a pitcher As time goes on and more people start to read my site (welcome!) I’m receiving more and more pitches from firms and other PR agencies. That’s fine with me – I’m in the business and I appreciate why pitching is necessary.

Unfortunately, many (most) of the pitches I receive are the kind of pitches that give our industry a bad name.

I recently received a particularly bad pitch – one bad enough to qualify for Kevin and Richard over at the Bad Pitch Blog. I almost hit “reply” with some pointers for the person pitching, but I thought I’d throw the tips out to everyone instead.

Bear in mind that these tips are based on my perspective. Judge for yourself whether they’re any good or not.

The original pitch

First, here’s the original pitch (with identifying information removed – I’m not into “outing” people):

To:

Subject: How social media saved a company millions…

Hi there. I’m an avid reader of various outlets that focus on social media and thought you would find this case study interesting. It shows how social media is more than just a trend, but how it actually translates to dollars and cents if done correctly. [...], a $2 billion privately owned company and the world’s largest grower, manufacturer and distributer of [...] products recently shifted their entire marketing and distribution model to social media and the results have been incredibly successful. By leveraging YouTube ([...]) and iTunes ([...]), the company immediately saved $110,000 in distribution in weeks.

As someone in the business of social media it’s always frustrating to hear about its effectiveness and see a lack of tangible of quantitative results. If you want more information including exactly how [...] leveraged social media check out the press release below. I think you’ll find it interesting. Thanks for listening.

Where the pitch went wrong

Here are a few of the ways I would improve this pitch. I’ll leave the overall structure and writing alone, as much of that is personal style.

Send the pitch to the blogger. BCC = delete. It screams “mass mailing.”
Sending the pitch to me allows you to also address the message to the blogger, by name (if possible). I like the personal touch.
Show the recipient that you know what they write about. I don’t care that you read “various outlets that focus on social media.” Tell me up-front why I should care. Don’t bury it in the last paragraph.
Make sure it’s news. The company immediately saved $110,000 in weeks? Bizarre grammar aside (immediately/in weeks?), the YouTube channel was launched a year ago. Oh, and I would think that a “YouTube channel that quickly became one of YouTube’s fastest growing [sic]” (from the press release) would have more than 17 subscribers.
Include a call to action. What do you want from me? What are you offering to make it easier?
Fix the typos. There’s just one here (distributer) but others in the release. Bonus point: Remember, MS Word’s spell-checker isn’t enough. “Scraped” (from the release) is a real word, but you meant “scrapped.”
Sign your name. Trolls send anonymous messages. Good PR people don’t.
Build a relationship. If you know a blogger-relations campaign is coming up, see if you can get permission to comment or otherwise get to know the bloggers in that community ahead of time, so the pitch doesn’t come out of the blue. At a minimum, try to read the relevant blogs for a while so you know what makes them tick.

A better approach

Here’s how I might have gone about pitching me (assuming the “news” was actually news):

To: davef [at] davefleet [dot] com

Subject: How social media saved a company millions…

Hi Dave,

I’ve been reading davefleet.com for a while and know that you’re interested in social media measurement and ROI, so I thought you would find this case study interesting. It shows how social media can translate directly to dollars and cents if done correctly, and speaks directly to the post you wrote some time ago about measuring success on YouTube.

In 2007 [...], the world’s largest grower, manufacturer and distributor of [...] products, shifted their entire marketing and distribution model to social media. They’ve just announced that by leveraging YouTube ([...]) and iTunes ([...]), the company saved $110,000 in distribution costs within weeks, and by this point they’ve saved over $[amount].

Please let me know if you would like more information – I’d be happy to arrange an interview with [name, position] for you. In the meantime, I’ve included a press release about the case study below.

Regards,

[Name]

What do you think? How would you have approached this?

(Photo credit: dkg)

Posted in: blogger relations, pitching

Tags: how to, tips

13Comments

Molson Gives A Crash Course In Relationship-Building

08.07.06

Every so often you see something that makes you sit up and think, “wow, these guys are on the ball.” I saw that from the folks over at Molson this week.

Brew 2.0

A few weeks ago I received a pitch from Molson’s PR firm inviting me to an event called “Brew 2.0.” As the pitch put it, “[…] to introduce their new breed of brew, [Molson] lined up Brewers Ian Douglass & Bryan Eagan, booked a badass room in the ACC & organized a tasting for the awesomest geeks in Toronto.”

This wasn’t the “wow” moment. To be honest I was originally more than a little confused as to why they invited me, a PR blogger who’s about as likely to write about a new beer as I am to brew it (or so I thought!). Still, it was free beer and I had a free evening so I thought “sure, why not” and agreed to attend.

I approached Molson communications rep Tonia Hammer at the event and asked her that same question. Her response was essentially that they wanted to start to get to know a few folks in the space. Fair enough – I’m open to that.

The rest of the evening was good – you can read more in Tonia’s write-up or Eden Spodek’s post – as expected, beer flowed freely, the people were great and I came away planning to write precisely nothing about the event.

The follow-up

Fast-forward to last week. I was a few days from hosting a barbecue at my house and had invited a bunch of social media types to come on out. Imagine my surprise when I got a direct message on Twitter from Tonia:

“Heard you’re having a bbq this weekend – want to drop off some ’samples’ for the party!! Let me know when you’re avail. for a beer drop”

I let her know where and when I was free and sure enough, the next day a whole lot of beer arrived at my door. What’s more, Tonia remembered what I was drinking at the Brew 2.0 event and included some of that in the mix.

Would this have worked if Tonia (and Molson) hadn’t already established a relationship with me before hearing about the barbecue? I doubt it. In fact, I probably would have thought it was a little creepy that they found out I was hosting a barbecue.

In reality, Molson’s approach did work – for several reasons:

They pre-established a relationship with me
They communicated casually with me (not in bureaubabble)
They proactively reached out when they saw an opportunity that would genuinely benefit both sides
They contacted me through the tools that I choose to use
They didn’t ask me to write anything about their products in return

In fact, they went to pains to say we weren’t expected to write anything about Brew 2.0 and when it came to the barbecue they didn’t even mention my site.

It was still a risky ploy – I’m sure some people might not have reacted well to being approached like this – but it worked for me. That’s the benefit you get from connecting with people early-on – you learn what works for them and what doesn’t.

The results

Me, writing this post about their blogger outreach
Twenty or so people who drank free beer all night and will likely tell their friends all about it
Photographs like these:

Eden Spodek, David Spodek and Rick Weiss

What do you think about this kind of outreach? Would it have worked for you? What would you have done differently?

(Image credits: Tonia Hammer, Dave Fleet)

Posted in: blogger relations

Tags: Eden Spodek, Molson, Tonia Hammer

21Comments

Metallica Update: Post ‘Em All

08.06.12

A quick update on the Metallica situation – as I wondered in my earlier post about the Metallica/blogger review situation, it looks like this was a giant mis-communication that blew up in the band’s face. Metallica released a statement on their website:

“…once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was “WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record. . . that makes no sense to us!””

The band has apparently taken matters into their own hands, and posted links to the reviews themselves. Good call, guys.

The only thing missing from their statement is an apology for the screw-up. Who knows, perhaps that happened privately. It might have been better for them to come out and say it publicly though.

Regardless, I did chuckle at the thought of “…a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at [management company] Q Prime to 20 push-ups each…”

</blogostorm>

Posted in: blogger relations, crisis communications, public relations

Tags: reputation

2Comments

Metallica: …And Censorship For All

08.06.11

Metallica has done it again. Forget going after people pirating their music; this time they’ve gone after people writing about it… after inviting them to hear it.

The Story So Far

Here’s how the story goes: Metallica representatives recently played tracks from their upcoming album to a bunch of critics/bloggers/journalists (depending on whose take on this you read). They then (surprise surprise) blogged about what they heard.

As Wired’s Listening Post blog reports:

“At no point was the writer ask[ed] to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Quietus and other websites ran pieces on the album, but were quickly contacted by Metallica’s management via a third party and told to remove the articles.”

Blogostorm

Surprise surprise – a storm has erupted in the blogosphere:

Metallica Has Smoked Themselves Retarded – Mashable
Metallica: One Step Forward, Two Steps… – Mathew Ingram
Metallica: you are insane (an open letter) – Webreakstuff
Metallica Still Doesn’t Get It: Forces Early Reviews Of Latest Album Offline – Techdirt
Metallica to bloggers: don’t review our music – ars technica
Pearl Jam ‘Gets’ Mobility, The Internet. Metallica Doesn’t – InformationWeek
Metallica goes diva on the Internet…again – Up on the Sun
Metallica really wants you to dislike them – CNet News

You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to tell how Metallica is coming across in these posts but in case it wasn’t clear, here’s a quote from the CNet piece:

In the wide world of music, our level of distrust first begins with the RIAA, but Metallica is running a close second.

PR Disaster

It’s hard to imagine a worse PR disaster for a band that, until this point Metallica had seemed to be warming to the Internet recently.

They’ve allowed their tunes to be sold through iTunes, they have a cool new website, Mission: Metallica and Ethan Kaplan, head of technology at Warner Bros records (who was behind the new site) gushed about some of their latest efforts at mesh 2008 recently. It seems, though, that they still have a lot to learn.

However, Metallica lost much of their credibility with fans after going after Napster a few years ago – a move that still looms large in peoples’ minds (and was the first thing out of the mouths of my colleagues when I discussed this with them today).

On top of that, consider that this revolves around an event where writers were invited to listen to the new songs, without a non-disclosure agreement… and that their reviews were largely positive by all accounts.

Recovery?

How can the band dig its way out of this situation?

Before thinking about that, you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions:

Should they just move on?

Is this situation salvageable? Given the apparent contradiction in their approach to this situation so far, perhaps it’s best for the band to ride this one out and learn from their mistakes.

Do they need to respond?

Metallica has a die-hard fan base. They’ve been around for 27 years now, and many of their fans are long-time listeners that, quite frankly, won’t be put off by a few bad articles in the press. Let’s face it, they’ve been getting those since they put out the ‘Load’ album back in the ’90s.

Still, some of the comments I’ve read recently seem to indicate that they’ve even managed to annoy some hard-core fans. Perhaps some damage-control is in order.

What To Do?

Knowing that they’re unlikely to go the Nine Inch Nails route, what could they do?

Go One Better?

Why not let those the writers listen to the full album once it’s done (along with an assurance they can write about it)? No bribing, just an honest attempt to make things better.

Personally I think this might be problematic. There’s not a lot of trust in Metallica right now, as I discussed earlier. What’s more, I’m not sure these publications would give them a second chance. The horse may have already bolted on this one (insert Ride the Lightning pun here).

Apologize

Someone, somewhere has screwed up. Maybe the band didn’t know about the advance listening and freaked out. Maybe two people in the record company got their wires crossed. Maybe someone forgot to arrange for a non-disclosure agreement. Who knows.

If the band wants to say anything about this situation, they need to apologize first. Whatever went wrong, they need to figure it out and apologize to the people involved. Don’t point fingers at the writers or make excuses. Just say sorry.

That’s my take on this one. I’m not sure I can see a way for Metallica to come out of this looking good. Their options seem to be to either ride this one out or to risk re-stirring the pot and apologizing.

I think the damage may be done. Perhaps the ‘duck and cover’ approach might be better here. What do you think?

Can you think of a way Metallica could salvage this situation?