“Free” Press Passes are Not Free: Pirillo Gets it Right - Here’s Why

I applaud Chris Pirillo’s totally reasonable stance on press passes as reported by Scoble. Pirillo is telling all press to buy tickets to Gnomedex, just like everyone else. We get inundated with requests for free passes to the Blog Business Summits — and do give a few out, but most requests are denied. In a few rare cases we have been flamed when we didn’t give one out to everyone with a pulse and an RSS feed, so here is the rationale for our stingy position.

Three things not widely recognized by even the most enlightened digerati, but easily grasped by event planners is:

1) Every head in the room costs real money, especially at the venue where Gnomedex and the next BBS will be held.

The Bell Harbor Conference Center counts heads and charges the host of the event for every one. The venues that don’t do this charge five bucks for a cup of coffee, and don’t forget binders, badges, and managerial overhead. Receptions and lunches? Ouch, big bucks. People don’t understand that at real conferences, there is generally little to no charge for meeting rooms, it’s the incremental food and beverage that matters. Every “free” pass can cost hundreds of dollars in direct inescapable charges.

2) It’s Econ 101 people, there’s this thing called opportunity cost. This is the big one. If your event sells out, every free press pass displaces a paying (and upset!) attendee. That means you stand to lose a lot of money and your staff has to deal with angry potential customers being turned away. Gnomedex is being held at a small venue, and it’s pretty much sold out (still wondering why after last year’s success Chris chose such a tiny meeting space) so these free passes are incredibly expensive for Pirillo.

Back when I was producing the world’s (first and only) Photoshop Conference, folks from Adobe Systems wanted dozens of “free” passes to a conference that was sold out. Apparently they thought meeting space was like software and can be infinitely reproduced at almost zero cost. We were already turning away people with cash in hand, so we had to limit the freebees we could offer. Apparently, there are still managers at Adobe that think I was just being random and inconsiderate to them. Hope they read this and understand the rationale.

3) Even good press happens too late. Articles and coverage tends to occur during or after the event, which may help you a tiny bit with attendance next year, but don’t do a darn thing for you this year. Tell me how you want to cover the event before it happens and I’m intrigued, tell me about how you want to cover it when there, and I’m not particularly motivated.