This is an archived blog from when I ran Conscious Public Relations Inc. from 2008-2018. Excuse the potential outdated-ness!
Reinventing client service by going back to values and questioning the nature & structure of current PR tools
It’s because of a number of things. In 2010, I declared the news release dead, and committed to doing no more than 4 news releases per year. I broke that in 2014 when I made a record number of them for clients, and I have already written three this start of the year. After being asked to do them over and over again, it has become automatic.
I believe in my soul that it’s a combination of my 6 months meditating, the fire energy that I am being reminded of over and over again, and completing one of the most profound business books I have ever read – The Cluetrain Manifesto – that has prompted me to do one of the most epic blog posts in my history. I also just got this yesterday in my inbox from Mastin Kipp. Yes, it’s written to sell Marie Forleo’s program, but it resonated with me anyway. I hope it does with you too.
I thought deeply about how I worked on some amazing projects last year, but the fact that they could have probably been done BETTER if I had just thought out of the box more – even for clients whose social media or overall marketing plan we were not handling. There is SO much more to Public Relations than just a news release. And it’s also NOT a press release — the majority of media types are not on printing presses anymore. Can we EVER do without this archaic term? And this archaic document, while we’re at it?
I explained to Leo that releases were invented as announcements that were once mailed and faxed. In the age of the Internet, we do not need these tools anymore, and we do not need media kits in the advent of websites, blogs, and YouTube. We can now use the time we would have used writing releases and creating media kit documents to do other, more efficient AND effective things.
As long as I am running Conscious PR, I am internally committed to doing more for the world through two things: First, filtering who we choose to work with through our values. If someone seems awesome on paper but only carries three of five of our values, it’s not enough. Connection and Community are absolutely mandatory. In a few months time, I will be posting a new Cultural Manifesto that outlines what each of these values means to our company and explains how and why we operate the way we do.
Second, I thought back to the promises I made to myself about not writing news releases, and realized I had broken my own vow. That’s fucking harsh! If we don’t have our inner word, how can we deliver the best to our clients? And that is why the first step I am taking to reinvent our company is to murder the news(/press/media) release. I’d like you to do the same for any other systems you do that you loathe and find unnecessary in the modern age. While I can’t promise I will never ever write a release again, I’m at least going to avoid writing ones that want to make me vomit a bit in my mouth and swallow it down. Below, I have made the most horrible news release in [my] history; I hope that it doesn’t haunt me. What you’ll find is that many of the news release entrails out there are still going to sound a lot like this:
This Awesome Thing Happened To Us and You Should Talk About It
City – Today, we’re announcing this awesome thing that happened at our awesome company. We don’t really know who it effects, but we’re telling you this because we’re hoping you’ll talk about it in the form of a full-page article, broadcast interview, or as a feature post in your online outlet. We didn’t bother to consult a PR person in writing or sending out this release, since there are tons of templates online that we could just follow.
“I can’t tell you any more how awesome we are that this exciting thing has happened to us,” says the CEO of this awesome company. “I’m sounding super excited in this news release, but the person sending this out doesn’t realize that I’m on vacation, and if you try to call me directly, you’ll get a voice message and I won’t be able to respond for another two weeks.”
Here is an additional paragraph that tells you how awesome we think we are, even though no one else might. We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re awesome! We’re SO awesoooooooome!
About Random Awesome Company Inc.: This company started a number of years ago, and we didn’t think to tell anyone about it at that time. We’ve got sales, but no real idea who our customers or clients are or how to reach them. This is why we need your help, to tell them how awesome we are so that they can visit our site and buy from us. We’re not really interested in talking to them directly, either in the form of a blog (which requires too much time and effort to write on our part), or social media engagement where we post, but don’t really monitor for feedback. For more information on our awesome company, visit www.randomawesomecompany.com.
– 30 –
(We’re not really sure why we need to put this number, but we’ll do it anyway.)
Media contact:
We’d rather just have you report on us rather than harass us in an interview, so we’ll just leave our website for you to look at once again: www.randomawesomecompany.com. We’ve got a contact form there that goes nowhere.
Disclosure: This news release is for demonstration purposes only and bears no resemblance to any company or person.
