As not everyone checks back on comments, and a good few of you are corporate comms and PR people who need to know about this stuff, it’s worth highlighting this comment from Charles Arthur following my post about his New Year’s resolution not to read press releases anymore, seeing as he gets all his good stories from his aggregator:
True – I’ve never been a big
advocate of press releases. Though I’ve always advocated that PR people
enable journalists to talk to clients. I’ve waded through press
releases for 20 years, and their quality hasn’t materially improved.If you have a MAJOR news story, you’re likely still to call me. And I’ll listen, and tell you whether it sounds that way to me.
And I’d certainly say my best journalism has come when I’ve been
doing things that the PR side of whichever business has been actively
opposed to what I’ve been doing. What does *that* say? It’s often the
case, after all, and not only at the national level; writers on trade
papers and sites have the same ambitions too. It’s why they’re in
journalism.No more NDAs.. well, they’re just not a good idea, are they?
It is also worthwhile checking out the comments section on his original blog post on the subject – there’s been some lively and interesting discussion there. A selection of a couple of things Mr Arthur says that are interesting (since they are part of the comments section debate all of these quotes are, ahem, taken out of context):
…as to the question of how to get an interesting company onto the radar
– well, what’s it done? What does it have to offer? And more
importantly, who’s talking about it and why? Generally Man + Dog + Idea
is of only limited interest. Man + Dog + Idea + interested customers
making noise on blogs is much more write-worthy. And then there’s the
indefinable element of zeitgeist – which doesn’t quite mean fashion (I don’t think)…….Am I predicting the end of PR as we know it? I’m saying that a lot of
it is being circumvented by blogs. Except for the big enterprise stuff,
but even that could change. When the engineers can blog stuff that gets
read direct by the users and potential buyers, you start getting to
that stage where the marketing process is being.. not undermined, but
changed.….I’d say that what’s always interesting is *issues*. PR stuff tends to
be “announcements”. Press releases can point me towards issues, so
they’re not redundant.
"Not undermined, but changed." Yep. Having spent some time debating the changes connected media will bring about for PR I would say that there are a lot of people out there ready to embrace the change.
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