I’ve only been on the receiving end of high tech press releases.

I have not seen any releases coming from the fashion industry, or the auto industry, or, say, the pharmaceutical industry.

But I’ve sure seen my share of consumer electronics releases. Thousands of them. Maybe 10,000. Most of them come from dedicated public relations companies, which makes the following statement even more absurd:

The vast majority of press releases about consumer electronics are absolutely terrible.

TODAY I received a release from a sender I’ve never heard of with this subject line: “Interview Request Converged Mobile Voice Trends”

The body of the release had bullet points on things called “centralized services” and “service gateways.”

The sign off consisted of “Thank you,” with no name after the comma.

Who is the interview with? How does it possibly apply to my audience of electronics consumers? (My guess: it doesn’t).

But at least this press release had something to do with my chosen field.

I got another press release on Thursday, which led with the following:

[Name Deleted], an expert on health and nutrition, is now available for interviews June 2 and 3.  He can talk about a wide variety of topics.  For example: How fat is good for your body, Manny Ramirez and his health, How Good fat could help replaced bad fat in your body, and a few others.

Seriously. That’s how it started. You know what’s worse than sending a tech media guy a press release about health? Capitalizing words after commas!

Given this sloppiness, I know the following is true in both of these cases:

• I was on a massive list of receiving media, and the sender was either lazy or…
• The senders are amateurs who don’t care WHO receives their info
• This is the worst one: that the companies and people being presented as experts don’t care how they’re being represented to media. Think how this reflects on their work. They don’t know that this is how they’re being pitched? They’re paying for this!

Here are  three  quick (I once thought) very obvious tips to publicists blasting releases:

1. At the very least, target your press releases and interview requests to media who actually cover what you write about.
2. Many of the recipients of your writing are professional writers. As such, isn’t the quality of your writing important? I’m talking about little things, like sentence structure, grammar, etc.
3. Try, at least a little, to tailor your pitch to the audience of your recipient. This is not possible if the pitch is going to hundreds of recipients. Which means you’ll have to do a bit of work to group and categorize your list. Don’t want to send emails to journos one-on-one? Then at least split your recipients into categories, say, industry press and consumer press. Or writers, editors, and producers. That way, at the very least, you’re not talking about a producer’s “readers” or a writer’s “viewers.”

The people receiving your pitches hold your success in their hands.  How are you presenting yourself?

I have a lot more on this topic, and effective consumer electronics public relations will be a big category here.