Mourning the Press Release

re: Mourning the Press Release

Sam Michel — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:38:00 GMT

Steve, you're so right about press releases. It's ingrained in the marketing culture though, and is going to take a while to break the habit.

Not so long ago I was working on a release about CNET's media sponsorship deal with Chinwag and just effortlessly slipped into using superlatives. Fortunately, Deirdre was on hand to sort things out and turn the language back in the direction of what passes for plain English at Chinwag.

It was much harder work making the release read well, and explain what was happening without all the guff. Perhaps the reliance on superlatives, acronyms and over-blown language is a crutch the PR industry has relied upon for too long?

re: Mourning the Press Release

Neville Hobson — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:19:18 GMT

I agree with your take on this, Steve, ie, how the press release is written is more the issue and not whether the press release itself should be consigned to the trash can.

This topic has been a lively and often heated discussion among many in the blogger PR community for at least the past year. Some call for the 'death of the press release' and using blogs instead while others point to the emerging social media press release as its salvation.

The social media press release is definitely an evolutionary step. Yet the delivery mechanism for news and information matters little if the news/information itself is so poorly expressed that the end result is waffle, spin and hype.

Info about the social media press release: http://www.socialmediarelease.org/

A couple of my favourite words to add to your list of cringe-inducing words so common in too many press releases: 'harness' and 'reveal.'

I notice 'evolutionary' beginning to creep in to usage so I need to be careful with that one!

re: Mourning the Press Release

stevecla01 — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:01:08 GMT

Hi Neville

thanks for the link - I'll go check it out and keep an eye out for "evolutionary" ;)

I just spent the morning at Mix07 (MS conference in Vegas) and it struck me that there was so much stuff announced that I actually need the press releases to assimilate it all. Let's hope they're not full of hyperbole!

Steve