Press release 2.0

Posted Wednesday, March 1, 2006 at 11:25pm in PR General  | 

I’ve got to stop using the ‘2.0′ cliche, but it fits so nicely in everything ‘new’.

In reply to Tom Foremski’s Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die! (feeling a touch angry Tom?) post, Todd Defren has responded with a press release that fits into Tom’s requirements. Tom asks for a deconstruction of the release “into special sections and tag the information so that as a publisher, I can pre-assemble some of the news story and make the information useful.”

Not sure what Tom means by ‘tags’? Surely he means an inclusion of hyperlinks to related outside sources? Or does he mean that all PR pros should agree to some sort of tag standard so journalists can pull in other relevant information to create their story?

Tom says to leave the spin to the journalists as they “are going to go with their own spin on the story anyway, so why bother?”

He bullet-points his requirements and Todd responds:

-Provide a page of quotes from the CEO or other C-level execs. [check]

-Provide a page of quotes from customers, if applicable. [not applicable I don't think...Todd?]

-Provide a page of quotes from analysts, if applicable. [check]

-Provide financial information in many different formats. [check]

-Provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources. [check]

Todd isn’t a fan of the current press release and has called for a change in the past - maybe he’s right? In this changing media climate (another cliche) perhaps PR pros should be working with journalists to deliver a new standard. Kudos to Todd for throwing out a positive response where no doubt so many will only ……. and ……. (insert bad words here)

Side note: Kevin Duggan believes it’s not the delivery but the content, but in my humble opinion, they’re two different issues entirely and should be addressed separately.

Side note II: I’ve got to start criticising the PR profession - my link count and traffic need a boost. ;)

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Todd Defren

Thursday, March 2, 2006 at 3:52am

Thanks for the warm words, Stephen (and no, to answer your question, no customer quotes since the product in question is not on the market yet)!

And please, DON’T join the madding crowd that likes to harp on our faults. We can be part of the solution, eh? Let Foremski rant. ;)

FWIW, I read ya all the time.

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