What a difference a year makes

The survey - whether genuine or contrived - has long been regarded by the PR fraternity as a good pretext for a press release, or as a way of boosting the chances of coverage for a weak story. Another is the anniversary.

We’ve recently been reminded about the outbreak of the Second World War sixty years ago and in November it will the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall - all good so far, but when IKEA issues a press release telling us that the Billy bookcase is thirty years old, things are starting to get a bit silly.

When interviewed on the subject, journalists fall into two camps - there are those happy to explain the rules of the game (it has to be a round number, eg. not 249 years since the event) while others complain that good stories get passed over by editors simply because they don’t tick the ‘relevant anniversary’ box. Broadcaster and former controller of the BBC World Service, John Tusa confirms that a “In an ideal world if you have a good idea, you do it … however we’re all poor, weak people and if someone says there’s an anniversary we all say ‘how wonderful.’ We all recognise an anniversary. We don‘t always recognise a thought and an idea.”

So here’s looking forward to celebrations of jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt’s centenary, the four hundredth anniversary of Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter - both in January 2010 - and hopefully a smattering of product press releases from opportunist commercial organisations and their marketing advisors. If you can’t beat them, join them.

In the meantime, check out this website if you need some ideas: http://www.ideas4writers.co.uk/date-a-base.htm

Who reads this stuff anyway?

One really important point about digital press releases is that nobody reads them. But allow me to explain - the operative word is nobody. For the purposes of page ranking, getting noticed or just having your press release 'lodge' somewhere on the net, it's mechanised search engines that trawl the internet, not people. And they just don't have the same tastes as humans.

That doesn't mean you can copy and paste 1000 words of search terms without any syntax and get away with it - you need real content but there's no requirement to keep it quite so brief. These guys are so much faster and more 'patient' that it's a good idea to keep in all of those notes and background that you would have edited out for time-poor human eyes. What might have been a one page (double spaced) release becomes possibly three or four pages.

Company and author profiles, more detailed product/service specs and a nice section of relevant links - in addition to those embedded in the text - it's all grist to the mill. And when your client (if you're an agency) or you MD (if you're in-house) says 'I think we should put out a release our our investment in a new set of step ladders' or 'a change of a pantone reference in our logo,' there's no need to argue any more. Don't send it to journalists if you think it will weaken your reputation, but do issue it on a wire service. It will get picked up somewhere and together with stronger material can possibly help you deny a competitor some space on the initial pages of a Google search.