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09.28.07
Future of the Press Release - Acceptance
 By
Brian Solis
The press release is on life support and I’m rallying a team of supporters to euthanize it – not to put it out of its misery, but to keep it from contributing to the misery of reporters, analysts, bloggers and the people who read them.
The process of writing and distributing a press release can be excruciatingly painful and is almost laughable when you read the final product.
Company X Launches World’s First, Industry-leading, Innovative Thingamabob that will Change Our Lives for the Better
Fantasy Land, Sept. XX, 2007 -- So and so, a leader in such and such, today announced the world’s most groundbreaking, revolutionary, and never-before-seen widget and will change the lives of everyone who use it. Not only is it versatile and ubiquitous, but it scales across the marketing bell curve and in to the long tail. It is a disruptive game changing solution that forces a paradigm shift and, yes, it’s just that simple to use.
“We are excited and thrilled and happy and delighted that our new widget will change your life,” said a company executive who didn’t say this quote, but instead simply signed off on it since their PR person wrote it for them. “There really is nothing out there like it. We have no competition. This is something everyone needs; they just don’t know it yet.”
# # #
OK, so I think you get the picture.
The funny thing is that releases like this pollute the wires and search engines and one can only imagine how many revisions and contributors it took from the marketing and executive teams to ensure that every buzz word and useless piece of jargon made the final cut. The end product will usually say nothing about what it is, who it’s for, why it’s different and why it’s valuable and beneficial to the people to whom it’s targeted. Yet, everyone needs to get their hands on it as some form of self righteousness, demonstration of value, or simply job security.
But why doesn’t everyone already know this isn't the best way to do things? The press release is 100 years old!
I recently joined a Bulldog Reporter panel to discuss “smart” press releases and the art of creating SEO (search engine optimization) and Social Media Releases and the differences and advantages of each over traditional releases.
As the conference rolled along, I found myself thinking that before we jumped into this important topic, we should have started with the basics of what makes a release worthy of attention – regardless of SEO optimization or Social Media optimization (SMO).
As you may or may not know, I’ve been a proponent of reforming press releases since I was able to integrate HTML and multimedia into them back in the mid-to-late 90s. Do you want to know the first thing I learned?
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Brian Solis is principal at FutureWorks PR, an award-winning PR and Social Media agency founded in 1999. FW PR bridges the communications gap between companies and their customers, and between products and their specific benefits for their target markets. Solis blogs at PR2.0, http://www.briansolis.com, and regularly contributes to many industry trades. He is also frequently quoted in articles relating to technology trends and Marketing/PR strategies.
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