Are There Too Many Press Releases?

Saw this in Entertainment Weekly not too long ago and thought it was pretty funny.

EW Garth Edit

Does anyone else think that there’s a glut of press releases out there? Even though some see PR (wrongly) as “free advertising,” a bad or unwarranted press release is going to turn off journalists (supposedly the intended targets) as quickly as a bad ad would alienate consumers.

Perhaps the relative ease of production and distribution, either via email or one of the many wire services, makes it too easy to turn distribute news these days. However, blasting out a press release to your “list” doesn’t equate to a PR campaign and those that do it are possibly harming their clients more than they’re helping them. We’ll be doing a bigger well orchestrated rant post on that down the line.

For many of our clients, we don’t do formal press releases unless something really warrants attention. You’ll see the occasional one in the action sports trades surrounding a new team rider or ASR event, but when it comes to everything else, we keep it to the facts and then send it to just the media who definitely hopefully care about what our clients have going on. And while we have a big “list” of media here at the office, we don’t just send news to everyone we know. There’s a lot of news coming out of BBPR’s clients that we just don’t send to Chad @ Malakye for his news section, Kailee @ Transworld Business, JB @ South of the North or Joe Schmoe @ Major National News Outelt. Why? It’s not because we don’t like them. Usually because it’s just not relevant to them and they know when we do send them something, it’ll always hopefully be something they can use.

Before you blast everyone you know with a release that your widget is now 2 percent lighter (which IS a big deal if your widget weighs 20 tons) or comes in a lighter shade of pink, ask yourself “Does anyone really care?”

Bill Byrne is the lead media strategist for the San Diego based PR consultancy, BBPR. He’s been helping action sports brands sell out since 1997 and occasionally delivers fantastic results for his clients. Feel free to bother him @ bill@bbpublicrelations.com.