Over the past three blogs, I have mused over the expanding role of the news release since the very first one was issued about a century ago by the Pennsylvania RR at the urging of one of the very first PR practitioners, Ivy Lee. While the news release continues to fulfill its original role as a factual, succinct summary of a newsworthy development, it has proved over the years to be a more powerful marketing tool than meets the eye.

Because the process of writing a news release is deadline driven, its sense of urgency naturally commands the attention of all key stakeholders (often the CEO) in the messages that the release is to impart. As I have noted in a previous blog, the process of drafting the release often unmasks a lack of consensus among the stakeholders about key messages — and in some instances, an embarrassing lack of strategic marketing and/or weak product/corporate positioning.  Thus we find the news release performing an unintended but very critical role of driving consensus around marketing issues and key messages. In the best of circumstances, this consensus is reached before the deadline, otherwise the news release is postponed until such consensus is reached.

In the Internet Age where virtually anyone can become their own publisher, the news release takes on heightened importance as a communications and marketing tool.  Not only can it be distributed worldwide instantaneously and picked up by major portals just as quickly (thanks to electronic distribution by providers such as Business Wire), but it also becomes a searchable document that will be accessible on the Internet virtually forever.  Therefore, news release craftsmanship today needs to carefully consider the key words that its target audience is likely to search as well as what is said today may read in the future, perhaps years from now.  Indeed, the news release serves as a factual milestone that could be drawn upon in the preparation of future articles many years hence.

The real beauty of of distributing news releases in the Internet Age is the third dimension afforded by using hyperlinks within the release.  In the old days of printing and snail mailing, best practices and media preference suggested the length of the release be no longer than 3 pages double space.  But not so on the Internet where releases need be no more than 1 page single spaced with embedded hyperlinks that will zoom you to a “landing page” or photos, charts, graphs and even a video to get more information about the newsworthy topic.

In closing this final chapter on news release evolution, I would be remiss if I did not cite how effective the news release can be in directly communicating with current and prospective customers.  By emailing customers advance copies of the news release about a week before its released to the media, you’re telling your customers that you want them to be the first to know.  This not only flatters customers in that you consider them important enough to tell them the news before its news, it also compels them to read the release immediately owing to its deadline nature.  I have effectively used advance copies of a product news release to invite customer prospects to an event at which the new product would be formally unveiled.

Thus Ivy Lee’s “press release” of yore, which I prefer to call a news release, has evolved into a more powerful communications and marketing tool than meets the eye. Those who do not treat it as such are sadly shortchanging themselves.

Tags: advertising, corporate communications, news release, press release, publisher

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 8:53 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.