Let’s start with George Orwell. We might as well. He said, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
Even though BroBible has a silly name that some people might not like (…but also, a footprint reaches millions of people a month across our channels!), I think about that quote every morning when I open my laptop. It’s a little prayer I say before wading into the great digital deluge that is my inbox.
And a deluge it is. Dozens, sometimes scores, of emails a day, each one marked with a kind of breathless, manufactured urgency. Each one is usually a PR pitch.
Sometimes they're from a junior person at a pitch shop who butchers my name and confuses my website with Men’s Journal or Gear Patrol or Sports Illustrated. (A for effort, I guess.)
Sometimes they’re from trusted friends. People I’ve known for a decade, and have a lot in common with. People I’ve actually had beers with. (This makes it harder.)
And sometimes, the email reads like a ransom note. An invitation to a Vegas timeshare presentation you’re somehow obligated to attend.
After nearly two decades in this lifestyle media game, I’ve come to a simple, fundamental truth that seems to be a well-kept secret in the world of marketing:
Brand news is not news.
Let me say it again. A new product you are launching is not news. A new marketing campaign you are running is not news. A collab you did with another brand is not news. A new celebrity or creator you have paid to hold your widget or say something silly is not news. A giveaway or contest with a big prize that collects first-party data from the audience and processes it through a system my business has built is not news.
This is, I’m sure, an unpopular opinion in certain boardrooms and on certain Zoom calls. I’m sure it’s very unpopular with the highly paid agencies that promise “earned media” (or, free advertising) and glossy coverage books to the businesses they represent.
It’s news to you, of course. You have economic stakes in it. Your bonus might depend on it. That’s fine. But I don’t have to care about it, nor does our audience, in your attempts to hack culture and cobble together a viral moment that lives in the masses’ attention for as little money as possible.
I have a payroll to hit. Our stakes are not aligned.
My philosophy is much simpler:
People like to read about people.
If there isn't a human story element to a PR pitch, it’s just a stunt. It’s an attempt to hack attention. And the engine of this publication, the thing that keeps the lights on, is storytelling. Real stories. About people. Sports figures, entertainers, musicians, creators, media personalities, regular old joes, genuine heroes, etc.
So many pitches that land in my inbox seem to have forgotten that people exist at all. They are sterile, corporate, and devoid of a soul. They are asking me to do marketing, for free.
I don’t like working for free. I bet you, the person sending the PR pitch, don’t either.
And I have to be the cop who says no. I have to be the bad guy.
So it goes.
But here’s the thing. We want to work with you. We have a whole suite of tools and products—short-form video, long-form features, Instagram stories, podcasts—that can put your brand in front of millions of people. We’re excited to come up with creative ideas to do it. But that requires a partnership. A collaboration. You know, the kind where money is exchanged for goods and services.
Here at BroBible, we’ve been doing this for over 15 years. We’d love to collaborate with you. We’ve thrown parties for our advertisers. We’ve gone on multi-month road trips for our advertisers. We’ve done giveaways and contests for our advertisers. We’ve made gift guides. We’ve done every genre of paid media imaginable to make sure your campaign gets eyeballs. We’ve engaged celebrities, professional athletes, and high-stakes professional production teams for our advertisers, all while continuing to push out organic news people actually want to read to keep our audience engaged.
But, if your pitch is just, “Here is our product news, please write about it,” my question is always the same: Why?
Why should we care when it’s not truly newsworthy to our audience? Why should we dedicate our resources—which are finite and valuable—to something that offers no return, when there are a million other stories to tell?
Look, I don’t want this to be a rant. I want it to be helpful. So, in the spirit of transparency, here is a cheat sheet. A window into my brain as I scan the inbox, finger hovering over the delete key.
Things That Will Get Your Pitch Deleted
The Unpaid "Collab." The collaboration playbook is tired. Everyone is doing it. The formula is pretty hacky at this point: Thing + Unlikely Thing = Attention! It’s just two brands that seemingly do different things, agreeing to co-market, hoping the media and social clout will do their job for them. It’s an attention hack that audiences are growing numb to, and occasionally makes them feel crazy. Soon, there will be diminishing returns as audiences hit a wall of attention fatigue. From our perspective, it offers no original story that ten other outlets won't also have.
Contests & Giveaways. Let’s be clear. You are asking us to leverage our audience to build your marketing funnel. You want our first-party data. You are pulling a quarterback sneak that a big shiny object like money or a free item or experience will generate news so that you can get consented emails that you can retarget your product to. Attention is one of the most valuable things a media company has. The idea that this should be "earned media" is, to put it gently, absurd. I’m sorry, but I know this chess game and I will not promote your giveaway or contest for free.
Just... Product News. “We have a new flavor of whiskey.” Great. Good for you. But it’s not a story. It’s an announcement.
The Product Review. The age-old quid pro quo. You send a free thing, I write about the free thing. Let's call it what it is: a transaction, not a story. Even the algorithms are getting wise to it; Google knows audiences see these 'reviews' for the thinly-veiled ads they are. We don't trade posts for products. It's as simple as that.
The Affiliate Hustle. This is the new favorite pitch. I used to love the affiliate channel for the revenue it unlocked to our business, but lately it’s grinded my gears. It goes like this: I get a special link, and if someone buys your thing, I get a few crumbs. On paper, a beautiful friendship. But the game is often rigged by murky middlemen. It’s often built on "last-click attribution," a fancy way of saying we can do all the work, but if our reader later comes back through a Google ad, Google gets our money. So it goes. There’s a lot of on-site trickery that’s left me with a lot of distrust in this world—the pop-up offering on the retailer’s site for 10% off that magically breaks our link. The simple playbook of "post, drive sales, make money" is dying, especially as Google's AI answers swallow traffic that used to go to publishers. We still consider affiliate opportunities if a proven opportunity is available, but often it’s a pass. That said, we have a performance marketing strategy that actually works. It requires a real partnership and teamwork, not just crossing our fingers that your link doesn't get swiped at the goal line.
The Group Press Junket. An invitation to fly somewhere with 30 other "creators" to have the exact same experience and produce the exact same content. This is not storytelling; it’s a content conga line. Worth-it-ness is a real thing. My job as a writer + content creator is, indeed, a job, and I live for my own “me time” with my friends and family on nights and weekends too, just like everyone else. Small, bespoke groups with opportunities to engage in storytelling, involving humans in the experience, please.
News About Other Creators. “We collaborated with Influencer X on a new... whatever.” Fantastic. We are also a media brand and creator. You are asking us to promote our competition. I don’t care.
Things That Will Actually Get My Attention
A Truly Unique Experience. Position a one-of-a-kind experience against a larger cultural question. Give us a compelling story to tell, then let us dig in and do some creative framing and research to bring it to life. For example, we once asked: Is the cure to Male Loneliness actually just buying a Sea-Doo? It’s a wink and nod to that clever New York Times story on pickleball that went viral in 2023. I rode some Sea-Doos in Long Beach on a beautiful summer afternoon, and then framed this bigger cultural discussion around men’s social isolation and mental health around the idea that there’s social connection in ownership and shared hobbies, and maybe that’s something missing from the wider cultural narrative right now. You need to be into things to connect with people. The fact is that a social nucleus is a key concept, and many smart companies are realizing this. That’s a story. I got to go find out for myself, then write about it. I put a ton of time into it, and I’m very proud of it. It’s generated hundreds of thousands of impressions and shares on our site and Instagram, so it’s certainly struck a nerve.
Being First. Give us an exclusive on an aspirational experience before anyone else. Let us be the ones to frame it for the world. I recently played in Taco Bell’s first-ever golf tournament. I knew a lot of people wouldn’t have this opportunity, at such a beautiful course on the California coast, so I had to do it. We were there, and we got to share our unique perspective on it. We created a story that was ours alone, one that evoked a little aspirational FOMO.
A Real Interview. An exclusive, 20-minute-plus video conversation with a genuine culture-maker. In person, preferably. Something that leads to information that can’t be found anywhere else and can be used cross-media. We can build entire content packages around a single, compelling interview. A two-minute soundbite on Zoom with a well-paid celebrity droning on with sterile talking points about what they’re getting paid to do is not this.
A Low-Stakes Dinner or Party to Meet Interesting People. I’m not going to fly across the country for it unless it’s really important to our business, but if it’s in the Los Angeles area and I’m free, I’m always down for a hang. Our team is dispersed across the country, and I work remotely. I genuinely enjoy meeting new people in this unique world of content marketing. I’m also very grateful to have been invited out for a couple of hours, and I look forward to yapping with others at this sort of low-commitment social function.
A Genuine, Exclusive Brand Story. Bring us something that has real cultural intrigue that we can break first. It makes us feel special, as if you genuinely care about us, not just using us as a means to an end. For example, a few months ago, a book publicist sent me a story about a new book on the Grateful Dead, which included a previously untold story about Jerry Garcia driving around with AK-47s in his trunk. Now that is interesting! That is a story that other outlets will pick up from us. You’ve made us the source.
See the difference?
One list is about you and your marketing goals. The other list is about finding a compelling story for our audience.
The modern media business is not a charity. Shit is hard out here. I deeply care about my people, as a partner in this business and the relationships I’ve forged working with them over the years. And I still believe BroBible has lots of room to grow, even in this crowded world where everything and everyone has to be a media company. Hell, we just hit an all-time high in monthly views on Instagram: 72 million! Wow! Go us.
But we are not here to simply amplify your marketing campaigns for the good of your bottom line. I aspire to work less, not more, and I bet you do too. Thus, we are here to tell stories that resonate with our audience, and to run a business that enables us to continue doing so.
So, by all means, pitch us. But pitch us a story. Pitch us a person. Pitch us a real idea.
Or, simply ask for our media kit. I’d be thrilled to show it to you and have a conversation on how we can bring your goals to life on our channels.
And the pitches keep coming. And I will continue to delete the bad ones.
So it goes.
So on point. This is something CMOs and other C-suites need to understand when they push in-house PR teams to make non-news newsworthy. Good PR is meant to inspire the storytelling and provide meaningful content for you *and* your audience.
Thank you for this insight! Here I am, just one guy haphazardly running a new, funny wet wipes brand and I was thinking of reaching out to you. I'm a nobody, but I do have a story and maybe I can tempt you to hear it. :D