Thought Leadership: Should We Really Kill Off the Press Release?

A couple of years back, Orchan's Managing Director was quoted in a couple of publications discussing current trends and issues in our industry. Seeing an opportunity for further debate, Marketing Magazine approached Craig to write an article based around a particular quote that he made. Hence, "Should we really kill off the press release"? And, doesn't he look handsome? OK, don't comment! 

Marketing Magazine - March 2012

Should We Really Kill off the Press Release?

PR can be considered both a push and a pull industry. On one hand we have the agencies; creators of campaigns, spin, information, and even perspective, who help propel the information to the relevant, and sometimes not-so-relevant, media titles. But on the other hand, there is also a big pull-factor – that being, the various media who seek for content.

I get emails over the course of a week asking for any news relating to a range of client categories. Here’s where the PR practitioners job becomes very easy – the media are asking us for information, and we don’t even have to pitch. Ok, I’m not saying that this is an everyday occurrence, or that all publications do it, but in reality there is a trend for publications to engage with PR practitioners to help boost their story content.

This kind of symbiotic relationship is great. It demonstrates the important role PR plays as a facilitator in the ‘news-creation’ process, and reinforces the degree of trust that various media parties have in each other.

Recently a commentator, via a Harvard-embedded blog, called for the death of the Press Release – a historically integral tool to the profession. Honestly, who do they think they are? Yes, in reality, the Press Release is a historic blanket tool that is used to convey a specific (yet generalised) message, and that specific individually-crafted pitches are clearly going to get results for clients, but we also have to look at the fact that our little old out-dated friend, the press release, still has a place in our hearts, and our communication transactions. Media still like to receive them!

This may be out of tradition – the press release has been a tried and proven stalwart of trusted information ever since PR emerged as a business practice - but it also provides the media with the relevant information required. It is a way of giving a background to the story, at which time the individually-crafted pitch should be super-imposed on top of this.

Killing off the release will leave practitioners with an increased work load, and will result in story pitches being somewhat more targeted in terms of publications.

The old saying, ‘all publicity is good publicity’, will go out the window, as the reach of the story will be considerably less. Targeting, based on time constraints (alternately, agencies can charge higher fees as man-hours will have to increase) will get stories into first tier publications (those the clients identifies as must haves’), but the additional second and third tier publications will miss out, as they won’t be considered valuable enough  to pitch to. At the end of the day, these second and third tier publications will lack content, and here’s where the pull factor comes back in – contacting friendly agencies to help provide stories.

The press release is far from dead – long live the press release. But, do reconceptualise how you wish to use it – there is a time and place for everything, and for priority items, the release is not the answer – personal contact and facilitation is – but that doesn’t mean the release is useless either!