The death of the standard press release
This week I went on a tour of Reuters and Business Wire in New York.
For those of you who aren’t sure exactly what these companies do, let me summarize. Reuters is a news service that provides worldwide news coverage, especially in the financial market. Their greatest asset is getting the news out faster than anyone else. Business Wire is a company that can disseminate information for clients very quickly, including press releases and photos. Most major new outlets get their information on what is happening in the world most likely from at least one of these sources.
One of the questions I asked at Business Wire had to do with new media. I asked him what the company was doing to address the electronic media and the average consumer. He mentioned smart news releases that they provide their client, already imbedding smart tags, links and photographs into the press releases they sent out.
It made me think of the emerging trend that to captivate peoples attention, you simply cannot throw information at them—it has to be packaged. It has to be an experience. The highest ranked Web sites not only offer information but additional activities to enhance learning. People stay longer on sites that provide more than just text.
In public relations, more often than not we get into ruts by arguing over wording for days on end, getting ready to release a piece of paper with text on it. We should be preparing packages that contain audio files, short videos and interactive elements to capture people attention. Perhaps the distribution and hosting systems are not quite ready for this, but it is fast approaching. Who knows?
Maybe in a few years we won’t have to write press releases at all. That will be the day.
1 comment:
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