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April 21, 2007
Left out of an article? Why? - Ask your PR/Marketing staff
Every month or so, I get an e-mail that basically says:
"Why weren't we in this article? We should be in this article! We are the leader in [fill-in-the-blank] and we exhibit with VON. We should have been included!!!"
For variety, people sometimes drop hints that they know Jeff Pulver from Way Back When (Please, don't play that game; I was at his first VoIP event in the Puck Building in NYC, if memory serves, followed by the first "official" VON event at the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco...where I rode into town sharing a cab with Peggy Miles, met William Mutual for the first time, and ate one fine fine piece of salmon at lunch).
When I get these sort of letters, my general response goes something like this--
1) Have you directed this question to your PR staff (internal or external)? We have the VON Magazine editorial calendar on-line. If nobody queries us, how do/should we know you are interested in contributing?
2) Are you sending out press releases on a regular basis?
3) Have you tried to brief one of our editors in the past year?
The sheer number of exhibitors at VON events (between 500 to 600 spread out among multiple events, depending upon location, mergers/acquisitions, etc.) make it unreasonable for any contributor to VON Magazine to sort through exhibit lists each time they want to start work on an article.
Besides, this sort of thinking leads down a slippery slope of placing importance upon talking to you based upon the square footage of exhibit space -- something that I don't track/don't want to track/don't desire to track.
Think about it: if you've got a 10x10 booth and your competitor is shelling out for a 10x20, I should be talking to the guy with the 10x20 booth first, riiight? You may have a more interesting story, but...
Bottom line #1: Exhibiting at a VON Event does not guarantee you ink in VON Magazine.
Bottom line #2: Your PR/marketing people should be proactive in understanding our editorial processes, calendar, and deadlines. If they haven't articulated a strategy and process to get you in print...
Posted by dmohney at April 21, 2007 04:01 PM