Tech PR Gems: The problems with the press release

Friday, July 21, 2006

The problems with the press release

[Part Three in a series.]

Oh where to begin. So far, we've talked about the history and evolution of the press release. Time to turn our attention to the problems people have with press releases.

Who sounded the first death knell for releases? Full credit goes to B.L. Ochman. She sent out her last press release sometime back in 1989, and way back in October, 1999, claimed that "press releases are a waste of time." B.L., though, didn't spend a lot of time complaining about what was wrong with the approach. Instead, she focused on other, more effective, ways to get coverage.

Then, in March of 2000, B.L. issued her formal death sentence: "The Traditional Press Release Is Dead!" She wrote:

The Internet is the medium of instant communication, constant change, rocket speed. So why hasn't the message changed with the medium? Why is the format for electronic press releases the same as that of print?

B.L. took issue with the size of press releases, but also with the format:

Any experienced publicist pitching a story by phone knows there is only a 30-second window of opportunity. That's how long you get to grab a journalist's attention. If your pitch interests the reporter, s/he will ask you to continue with your story. The same thing will happen after a reporter reads an Internet-ready press release.

This time around, B.L. came back with some excellent suggestions for a new press release format. Again, we'll get to those in the next post.

Not to ignore other contributors to the process, credit should also go to Zhenya Gene Senyak. In August of 2000, just a few months after Barron's issued its own death knell, Zhenya wrote:

As a way to kick off your publicity campaign, the press release is dead. It's a casualty of the dot-com wars. You can lay it to rest alongside all those fax machines, teletypes, and iambic pentameters that didn't make it into Y2K. The mighty press release, whose right to life is guaranteed by the First Amendment, has been replaced by the keyword, the short email pitch, the hiccup followed by a URL. Or has it?

What issues did Zhenya take with the release?

The rap on releases is pretty straightforward. They often read like copy written by a summer intern with an anxious CEO looking over his or her shoulder. The basic model has a headline, dateline, and lead followed by a yada yada quote and a couple of paragraphs of even less significant news ending in corporate boilerplate. However, in this distinctively American literary form can be read the hopes and fears of an organization.

The Internet has changed the very reason we prepare and distribute press releases. And it doesn't have much to do with news. Cordell Koland, executive vice president of SIPR, says "Press release pickups for start-ups are slim or none. Publicity in those cases moves forward via phone, emails, and personal solicitations, not press releases.

The next stop in our tour of the "press release is dead" meme is Larry Kramer, chairman of CBS MarketWatch.com. In an October 19, 2000 commentary on the CBS MarketWatch.com website, Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter reported (on October 25th) that:

Larry Kramer, chairman of CBS MarketWatch.com, said PR Newswire and Business Wire have taken the "press" out of press release by ending a nearly 50-year-old tradition of giving releases to the press 15 minutes before releasing them directly to the public.

"The press release died" when the 15-minute delay was lifted, said Kramer. The "press release has now become just another infomercial, just another form of direct marketing, just another type of junk mail," said Kramer, who said the 15 minute policy allowed the press a few moments to digest the release and to bring some editorial intelligence to the process.

"Or, to be exact, [to] try to tell the truth behind the company statement," he said in an Oct. 19 commentary on the website, which he started.

Why did PR Newswire and BusinessWire lift this delay? Regulation FD, of course, which took effect that same month.

So the SEC can take credit as one of the instigators of the press release's death. But the SEC was simply acting on a fact that had been known for some time--journalists aren't the primary audience for press releases.

Another nail in the press release coffin came with the media backlash against marketing hyperbole continuing foothold in the press release, with phrases like "robust scalable best-of-breed next-generation turnkey solutions." (I'm sure this was written somewhere.) This made keyword optimization of press releases a very dangerous game!

While we're playing the blame/credit game, let's give a shout out to Doc Searls et. al. Around the same time as all this hubbub, The Cluetrain Manifesto started making its rounds. The very first of its 95 theses states: "Markets are conversations."

And press releases--as we've traditionally known them--aren't. They're a one-way, dead-end street. Jon Udell recognized this when he wrote his post suggesting that PR folks change the way they work (see the section called Contacting me: High-tech PR in the age of blogs). He wrote:

Here's how it used to work, and still mostly does. A PR firm sends out an email blast to a bunch of tech journalists, announcing that a tech company's CTO will be speaking at an upcoming conference. Then come the follow-ups: "Did you get our message?" "Will you be attending the show?" "Can we arrange a time for you to speak with our CTO?" These follow-ups have earned the unflattering term flak. Like every tech journalist, I'm on the receiving end of a lot of this stuff. I've always understood why it was necessary, but was always frustrated by the inefficiency of the procedure. It was never clear how to change the equation, until now.

Udell was certainly influenced by Cluetrain. And he of course had suggestions for what PR folks ought to do, but that's for our next post in the series.

Okay, enough history: both Kami Huyse and Constantin Basturea have the meme's recent history very well-covered.

So let's sum up what the major complaints about the press release are (there will be some overlap here):

Boy does that last point seem to sum up the whole conversation.

If these are all of the things that are wrong with press releases, we should probably talk about everything that is right with press releases. I'll start that conversation in the next post, which talks about the present and near future of the press release.

[Read the next installment.]

2 Comments:

BL - 9:15 PM, July 23, 2006: What a good post. And thanks so much for noting that I said it first. :>)

BTW, I sent out my last TRADITIONAL press release in 89. I still send out the occasional release, but it's never more than 300 words (I try to stay to 250) and I don't use traditional format.

What's right with well-written press releases is that they are a quick way to get the company's perspective on a subject.

Would that there were more well-written releases. :>)
Anonymous - 9:30 AM, July 28, 2006: Those bulleted items are perfect ammunition for savvy yet sincere pr people (and these DO exist) to bring to their bosses who insist on using press releases and worse -- the dreaded press conferences. ~CD