Without question, the news release today is relied upon to communicate (and control) virtually every aspect of news, both positive and negative, and to do so in a manner that builds both credibility and brand equity for the issuing entity. Over my 30-plus years of providing strategic communications counsel to high-tech clients, and writing more news releases than I can remember, I have come to regard the news release as an unsung hero in driving succinct, timely and disciplined communications both internally and externally. And unfortunately, I have often seen the news release development process expose a surprising lack of strategic and product marketing that should have taken place before the sourcing of the news release began.

Indeed, the news release has come a long way since Ivy Lee issued the very first “press release” in 1906 for his PR client, the Pennsylvania RR, which fell victim to a tragic railway accident at the time. Because news releases must be brief (ideally no longer than 3 pages, 11 point type, double spaced), they demand that the “who, what, why, when and where”of the news be factually and creatively woven into key messages that have been strategically fashioned to burnish the issuer’s corporate and/or product brand.

The brevity of a news release, even more critical in the Internet Age, forces the issuer to re-think carefully all key messages supporting corporate/product positioning vis-a-vis the changing competitive environment. More often than not, I have begun gathering inputs to write news releases to launch high-tech products only to find out that there was a lack of consensus among key execs about product positioning against competitive options.  As a result, the iterative revisions of a news release draft perform an unintended role of driving consensus.  This in turn surfaces the need to do additional market research, which can lead to  postponing the announcement until adequate strategic marketing has been performed to validate product positioning.

Thus the news release becomes the unsung hero in driving consensus among execs on important issues such as product positioning — and in the iterative editing process, it further drives the execution of strategic/product marketing that should have taken place before the sourcing for the news release began.

Tags: corporate communications, news release, press release

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 6:31 am and is filed under Big-M Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.