Press Release as a tool of communication
View(s):In Sri Lanka’s, US-based author Angelo Fernando’s book ‘Chat Republic’, released recently, he writes on the ‘press release’ as the source of information and how it has progressed over the years.
Excerpts from his thoughts on this topic in the book which deals with social media:
The Press Release happens to have the same initials as Public Relations. How unfortunate! It muddies the waters when people refer to PR as an activity that generates press releases, rather than an interactive, person-to-person behaviour.
While public relations’ is now considered a relationship, a back- and-forth exchange, the press release is a tool. At its worst, it is a formatted device of communicating to a specific audience —the media. A one-way channel; a machine-generated template.
But like the PR profession itself, the Press Release has gone through several evolutions, having been under attack by critics, and under construction by more progressive thinkers in the field. Some of you who have worked on a press release, and struggled with the accepted language of a release, may have begun to wonder if the language and format is now inconsistent with how it serves the intended audience—the media. Many journalists search for stories in other places. They filter their inboxes, and apply what’s crudely referred to as a ‘BS detector’ to releases filled with spin and gobbledygook. Even the marquee that announces “For Immediate Release’ is circumspect, since the media, which operates on a 24/7 basis, knows that something for ‘immediate’ use begs to be let loose on a myriad of other real-time channels.
There has been plenty of discussion—books, blogs, panel discussions, white papers—on the press release as an ailing (or somewhat advanced in age) communication tactic. Linda VandeVrede puts it this way: “The press release as a concept should just be one arrow in an entire quiver of possible arrows, not the sole method on which the company relies.” Others have been ready to pronounce the press release dead; if not completely obsolete, lacking a pulse.
Too much ‘top spin’
If the press release is on life support as some suggest, what might take its place? One candidate: the Social Media Release (SMR), something that was talked about five years ago. A quick recap if you are not familiar with the Social Media Press Release known by the acronyms SMPR or SMR. The idea of a Social Media Release was popularized by SHIFT Communications’ Todd Defren back in 2007. Defren was responding to an attack—make that a death wish—by a Silicon Valley, California-based journalist called Tom Foremski, who in 2006 complained that “Press releases are nearly useless,” with too much “top- spin,” filled with “pat-on-the-back phrases and meaningless quotes.” Often the press release is packaged with quotes from C-level executives, and ample servings of praise “from analysts, (who are almost always paid or have a customary relationship).
When she first saw the social media release, VandeVrede felt slightly overwhelmed as it was very jumbled and disorienting. Today, she feels it more closely reflects the snippets of information that we are becoming accustomed to when scanning for a story hook. Having links to further information is a good thing. To borrow her ‘arrow’ metaphor, these outbound arrows (links) point to a variety of relevant, contextual information. More importantly, a SMPR “allows journalists to pursue their line of interests, rather than having to deal with too much information in one body of copy?’
The Social Media Release got its first iteration when SHIFT introduced a template that was optimized with online distribution in mind. It was a nod to the structural value of a link. Its architects were making a bold gesture to finally say that there was a story within the story, a story outside the parameters of the information released, and it was not handcuffed to the provided quotation. It was a recognition that its’ embedded content—audio, pictures, video—would find its way, directly or indirectly, into blogs, social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds and other new media properties. It was different from the traditional press release in spirit because it recognized that the digital assets linked through the Social Media Release had to add context, not hype.
There was one additional feature that, at that time, was being discussed but not widely implemented: the need for content to be optimized for search engines. Not many knew how to do it, and search engine optimization, or ‘SEO was highly desirable.The press release was always a document with a singular intent— to earn … earn ‘press! It was not supposed to be a stealth move, so when some try to turn it into an act of spin, everyone suffers. If you play tennis, you will know how crafty a top spin serve is. It tricks you into moving wrong in order to get to the ball. Before you know it, you’re flailing at the air. There is a better sports analogy, from cricket—the ‘googly.’ The bowler, a leg spinner, delivers the ball as if it was a typical leg spin, and the batsman can see it is going to curve after the bounce, from the leg side (closer to him) to the off side (away from him). But the googly is a crafty delivery that tricks the batsman because even though he sees the bowler spinning his hand in that manner, the bowl er (who wants the batsman to see this) spins it even further, thus reversing the direction of the spin. To ‘bowl a googly’ is to be truly deceitful in cricket.
The social media release is the un-googly. It distances itself from any sleight-of-hand.
But something else has changed: the recipients of the press release. The ‘arrows’ were once aimed at the press. Today?
Shannon Whitley, who created the first social media release creation tool, PRX Builder, says that traditional PR which was once known as ‘Press Relations,’ has broadened in scope. Considering what social media has the potential to do, he has seen how the concept of the ‘press’ has been expanded to mean bloggers and group influencers. Whitley grants that it is still important to reach out to the press, but the release could also reach ordinary people. “Through Social Media, large groups of people are more available to PR professionals. With some work, PR practitioners can find places where the most important people for a campaign are already gathering. All one has to do is join the conversation.” Whitley is now an application developer who specializes in social applications for the Web, desktops, and mobile devices.
Pitch engine
Jason Kinizler takes a different approach, saying we should not be obsessing with or targeting the press at all! A former journalist and anchorman turned PR guy, Kinizier has been on both the receiving end of a press release and on the publishing side. He co-founded Pitch Engine, a service that promises to ‘free the press release.’ Free it from what? As the company puts it, the service intends to free it from the trappings of a document, to “put an end to the ‘Word doc PR era.” The newsworthy announcement is instead placed in a social PR platform.
“Back when reporters would typeset paragraphs from press releases straight into articles, the press release served as a utility—like a Swiss Army Knife. It was the ‘plug-and-play’ of its day.” When I asked Kintzler to elaborate on this, the word spam came up a lot. He was incensed by the fact that companies use a press release like an aerosol can to spray non-news across the wire services, with the intention of reaching thousands of journalists. Pitch Engine seems to be the grown-up version of the social media release. Kintzler shies away from calling it the social media release (the company has trade marked the word ‘Pitch’ instead). Why? He believes that the traditional wire services that created their proprietary versions of the SMR have ‘watered-down’ versions of what it could have been. “Truth is, all they did is put ‘share buttons’ on traditional press releases. You cannot make a press release social; it has to be crafted differently from the start—multimedia rich and conversational—something tradition al press releases lack.”
There used to be a working group dedicated to improving the format and promoting adoption of it. But it is no longer active. Whitley was one of the members of that group (Shel Holtz, Todd Defren and Chris Heuer were also part of it.) Today, PR professionals are breaking out of the template-ridden exercise, with tools through which they can engage with the media and broaderpublics.“Components of the social media release continue to find their way into the release stream. For instance, it’s exciting to see how HTML is now a major part of the downstream distribution from major newswires.” This opens up many new possibilities for social tools says Whitley. This downstream flow he refers to is about content elements or assets in the release (video, podcasts, image files, etc.) that are ‘search optimized’ so not just a journalist, but a company’s affiliates, vendors, potential investors or customers could get a more rounded view of a product or service they plan to be associated with. With social media’s promise, of letting citizens creating or curating their own media, the question is often asked whether the media release should be crafted for those who want the content by bypassing the gatekeepers.
Press releases will continue to evolve. They may not have the power of a direct message, a conversation between an ‘agent’ and a reporter over coffee, but they probably will not go away.
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