Why the best press release is no press release
I recently read a very interesting article at Marketing Sherpa blog called ‘why the best press release is no press release’, and couldn’t agree more.
I don’t want to be dramatic and say the press release as we know it is dead, but it’s certainly not the same useful PR tool it may have been yesteryear.
Particularly not when some press releases are simply blasted out to journalists in a scatter-gun approach. This backfired recently when Australian tech journalist Renai LeMay was sent a release about a new Facebook game where you can digitally reenact the life of a Marketing Executive. Exciting, huh? The agency in question was blacklisted for one month.
There’s no doubting that when you have huge news to announce, or corporate matters such as surveys, quarterly results, or forecasts, there is usefulness in a press release. But it is the responsibility of any good PR agency to pitch these stories to the right media.
Targeted, proactive PR always results in the best coverage. By figuring out a great story angle and aligning it to specific media outlets, Click PR has garnered some outstanding media hits for our clients recently.
The Sydney Morning Herald wrote about Nathan Murphy’s journey from a road to nowhere to the information superhighway. Nathan used Freelancer.com.au to help get his business off the ground.
Weekend Sunrise covered the launch of Freelancer.com.au along with a great case study in young entrepreneur Mat Carptener:
We’ve even successfully taken tech-heavy stories into the mainstream news with our fresh approach to PR.
Story, after story, after story, have all come off creating an interesting angle for our clients and pitching stories that talk directly to the most important stakeholders.
These exciting, interesting and high profile stories were not off the back of a widely distributed press release, but a targeted, proactive pitch.
When you have news that is so big you need to tell the world at once, why not try something new like a live press conference? We did this with the launch of Kogan LivePrice, and the results were tremendous. Check out the media coverage for Kogan LivePrice.
What do you think? Is the press release dead? When was the last time you saw a press release alone result in huge media coverage?
Michael Silverton
A spot on post, Vuki. The messaging mix is changing; in fact, has already changed significantly over the past few years. As Bill Parcells, former U.S. Super Bowl coach says, “You are what your record says you are,” and these spectacular results speak for themselves. Thanks for the great work on behalf of the Freelancer brand, this is only the beginning of far greater things to come. – Michael Silverton, VP of Marketing, Freelancer.com.