Is there such a thing as a Pinko Press Release?

[Eric Skiff]

Hello, my fellow pinkos! It's been a while since we've had a really active conversation here, and I share the blame for that as much as anyone. I'd love to get this group humming along again if we can because I learned so much from all of you over the past few months.

With that in mind, I've got a question up for debate:

We often talk about pinko in terms of "no outgoing messages," but in reality, "pinko-marketing" often gets implemented alongside other traditional advertising and PR. Pinko is intentionally strong in its ideals to help swing the pendulum back to empowering the users and making it easy for to spread the word if they want to, but what if you're going completely pinko. Should we examine some of the traditional methods and see if there is a pinko equivalent?

In the same tradition as a spread page that makes it easy for users to spread the word, is it bad to provide access to information to help make it easy for reporters to write about you?

There's a wonderful article about the death of the press release here:
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php

In summary, it says what we already know. The press release as we know it is a spin-heavy, self aggrandizing document. You can smell them from a mile away, and their stink often carries over into the barely re-written junk that fills the pages of tech-weeklies and other pubs.

The solution it offers is a new kind of press release: essentially a spread page for reporters with an unspun summary of your recent news, and then semantically tagged sections with relevant quotes from both executives and users, financial information, statistics, and third party analysis.

So what do you all think? The press release has to change, but is there any alternative to it going away completely? If we approach it as a resource to help reporters write objectively about our products / projects / services, could it be considered pinko?

I'd love to hear all of your thoughts, and really, just to reconnect a bit :)

Thanks
-Eric



--
Eric Skiff
Nonprofit Web & Database Admin, Consultant,
Podcaster, Pinko Marketer
718-809-8692

Blog    : http://GlitchNYC.com
Podcast : http://AlternativeMusicShow.com
Puppets!: http://FeltUpTV.com

[Marcus Nelson]

Hey Eric - 

This is a great question, something I'm wrestling with myself.

As any Pinko knows - the point is not to manufacture your own buzz, but to facilitate the end users excitement in communicating it's own message.  The user's response may take the form of testimonies, user commentary or flat out braggadocios-ness (my team/product/experience is the best team/product/experience)! 

The challenge is to channel these things in a factual way that stands on it's own -- it should not be sensational or driving (outgoing message).  If I think of existing infrastructure that already does a good job of facilitating this, the obvious is Wikis, blogs and forums.  But these existing mediums still don't answer the call of a Press Release.

So where to turn . . . ?  

Hmmm.

Tom (from the Silicon Valley Watcher) makes a great suggestion with taggable news stories.  While this is great in revolutionizing the way PR is delivered, It does not solve the dilema of the Pinko.

But, what if Wikis could be packaged with the release?  Blog posts and links galore?  User defined content that speaks of the usefulness of your team/product/experience.  Now that could be something worth looking into.  A centralized content manager for pulling in links and write ups in Trade Journals, Ma.gnolia, Technorati, Digg, Flickr, or where ever information is being communicated.  (can you say MashUp?  - I knew you could :-)

This way - a Pinko can start a Press Release by saying, 

"Hi, we're new and different.  

We have something special going on and we'd like people to know.  

Please take a moment to see our story unfold.  {link to centralized content manager}

Perhaps your newspaper would like to play a part

Regards,

superstarch.com"

I know it sounds simplistic, but strangely enough, people may "buy in" if it's refreshingly simple and different.

my 2¢

Marcus

[/pd]

Off Topic , maybe - -but is not a traditional press release simliar to
being "Crunched" ??

Early Adopters and users read a blog entry and then create their own
buzz. The Methods are the same, but the channel is different. The
pendulum swings to the users and not the decesion makers.

Is such a thought legit ?

> > Puppets!:http://FeltUpTV.com- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

[Citizen Rogue]

I get about 50 of these per week:

This way - a Pinko can start a Press Release by saying, 

"Hi, we're new and different.  

We have something special going on and we'd like people to know.  

Please take a moment to see our story unfold.  {link to centralized content manager}

Perhaps your newspaper would like to play a part

Regards,

superstarch.com"

Not helpful. Feels cold and lifeless. Is totally irritating. I'm considered part of the 'new media'...so I can imagine how 'old media' feels.

Everyone is new and different. Everyone is special. How about relationships? Press releases aren't Pinko, they are traditional and intended to be a mass message.

So, they aren't Pinko, they are PR...but hey...I never said that you can't mix the two...I mean, I wouldn't, but that's just cause I'm a purist. :)

T.

--
tara 'miss rogue' hunt
agent provocateur
Citizen Agency (www.citizenagency.com)
blog: www.horsepigcow.com
phone: 415-694-1951
fax: 415-727-5335

[Scott Brooks]

I think that there is still a need for an information release.

But in the old days it was here is the story .....when you get -30- it is the end of the story. don't look any further .....there is no more story.

Here is an example of a social media release. that bashed around.

http://www.shiftcomm.com/Web20Releases/5232006.html

I think there are times when you have to share information. And this format allow some structure in that .....you can expect that everyone is plugged in to the net.
I think the major thing that has changed is the message that has to go out .....no more bullshit. You can't spin things any more .....just ask edleman and steve reubel how that went on the walmart thing .....

cheers
scott
tara ...nice write on thinkvitamin

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Eric Skiff wrote:
> So what do you all think? The press release has to change, but is there any
> alternative to it going away completely? If we approach it as a resource to
> help reporters write objectively about our products / projects / services,
> could it be considered pinko?

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the idea is to change from
talking *through* journalists to talking *to* journalists. Chris Locke
talks about this a lot in "gonzo marketing" - he isn't talking to
people with the intention of "getting ink", but that's the consequence
of the conversation where he's communicating his passion.

Cheers,
Dave.

[Citizen Rogue]

Well said, Dave. Exactly.

T.

[Scott Brooks]

I am a PR person by education ......i tell them that they have to stop "talking to" and start "talking with"
semantics ...but we are clearly all on the same page on this one.
cheers
scott

[Paul Fabretti]

For me, the journalists need to be finding groups like THIS. If the
companies looking to get their name out there aren't already embedded
in the communities they are selling to then there's something wrong.

If the company has a story to tell, tell the people who are going to be
affected by it, not the journo's. If the story is good enough it will
come out anyway. Many might consider groups to be closed books, but
with blogging being a much more publicly aired way of putting a message
out there then is every chance something more widely seen will happen.

[Rohan Jayasekera]

A great topic with great comments.

 

Tara made this point:

>So, [press releases] aren't Pinko, they are PR...but hey...I never said that you can't mix the two...I mean, I wouldn't, but that's just cause I'm a purist. :)

 

I suspect that some of us are tempted to "dilute" the definition (to the extent that there is one) of Pinko, just so that we can call ourselves Pinko marketers even if we also do "traditional" marketing.  In a mostly non-Pinko world, avoiding traditional marketing is hard to get buy-in on, if nothing else.

 

Let's resist that temptation.  I think it's really useful to keep Pinko pure, because otherwise we'll never have a shared idea of what it is.

 

I propose that you can call yourself a Pinko marketer if you do any Pinko marketing.  You don't have to do *only* Pinko marketing.

 

Rohan

[Eric Skiff]

Thank you everyone for all the wonderful responses :) I'm getting a chance to do more and more pinko marketing and I'm in the extremely fortunate position of working with some people who really *get* it.

This thread has been great because it firmed up a lot of what I believe, but can sometimes start to doubt :)

I do agree that there probably a  (non-pinko) holistic approach to marketing that includes some of the more traditional marketing methods, as long as they're done in a genuine way. As for me, right now there is sooooo much great pinko stuff that we can be doing that it will keep me busy for quite some time, I'm just happy to have thought about this and mulled it over a bit before ruling it out.

Thanks everyone, I'm sure I'll have more questions and thoughts soon, and I really appreciate all the discussion about this.

-eric

[Samuel Rose]

It's weird to me, because a company that is trying to be transparent,
and trying to engage their community, and be community-driven, would
already be putting out a lot of information like what the Silicon
Valley Watcher reporter is talking about. They would already be putting
this information out in a findable way.

The press release is really like pre-writing the story for the
journalist. So, as a business,if you get a good relationship built up
with different news media sources, then you can feed them press
releases. And the news sources will use these when they need to fill in
"space" with news stories.

So, I think the Silicon Valley Watcher reporter is thinking in the
right direction: How to obsolete this symbiotic relationship between
the news media and PR industries?

If businesses put more factual information about themselves out in more
findable and re-useable ways, not as press releases, but as knowledge
bases about the business for use by communities of people who are
employed by, or who use the products or services of the business, could
this be used by news media to generate more informing and interesting
content?

What if several medium or large sized business really did not put out
press releases? And, what if they instead were deeply engaged with
interconnected communities of people who design, make and use their
products and services? It seems likely some form of "news media" would
emerge that would figure out how to cover these companies. These "news
media" could very well consist of existing or new media companies or
sources. But they would be kind of forced to find new ways to report
about these companies that are growing in popularity, but do not
produce press releases with pre-written story formats. They would have
to get active in the same community that the people who design, make
and use their products and services are involved in.

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>
> Hello, my fellow pinkos! It's been a while since we've had a really active conversation here, and I share the blame for that as much as anyone. I'd love to get this group humming along again if we can because I learned so much from all of you over the past few months.

> <br><br>With that in mind, I've got a question up for debate:<br><br>We often talk about pinko in terms of &quot;no outgoing messages,&quot; but in reality, &quot;pinko-marketing&quot; often gets implemented alongside other traditional advertising and PR. Pinko is intentionally strong in its ideals to help swing the pendulum back to empowering the users and making it easy for to spread the word if they want to, but what if you're going completely pinko. Should we examine some of the traditional methods and see if there is a pinko equivalent?
> <br><br>In the same tradition as a spread page that makes it easy for users to spread the word, is it bad to provide access to information to help make it easy for reporters to write about you?<br><br>There's a wonderful article about the death of the press release here:
> <br><a href="http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php">http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php</a><br><br>In summary, it says what we already know. The press release as we know it is a spin-heavy, self aggrandizing document. You can smell them from a mile away, and their stink often carries over into the barely re-written junk that fills the pages of tech-weeklies and other pubs.
> <br><br>The solution it offers is a new kind of press release: essentially a spread page for reporters with an unspun summary of your recent news, and then semantically tagged sections with relevant quotes from both executives and users, financial information, statistics, and third party analysis.
> <br><br>So what do you all think? The press release has to change, but is there any alternative to it going away completely? If we approach it as a resource to help reporters write objectively about our products / projects / services, could it be considered pinko?
> <br><br>I'd love to hear all of your thoughts, and really, just to reconnect a bit :)<br><br>Thanks<br>-Eric<br><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Eric Skiff<br>Nonprofit Web &amp; Database Admin, Consultant,<br>Podcaster, Pinko Marketer
> <br>718-809-8692<br><br>Blog&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;: <a href="http://GlitchNYC.com">http://GlitchNYC.com</a><br>Podcast : <a href="http://AlternativeMusicShow.com">http://AlternativeMusicShow.com</a><br>Puppets!: <a href="http://FeltUpTV.com">
> http://FeltUpTV.com</a>
>
> ------=_Part_24064_31384371.1163004867682--

[Rohan Jayasekera]

Companies don't need press releases to make facts available to the media.  Not if they have websites.

What the press release does add is that it's a "news alert".  Well, the newfangled way of distributing such things is through an RSS feed.  How about if companies had feeds of media information that interested publications could subscribe to?  Then the only unsolicited message a publication would receive would be "we are company X and we are of interest to your publication because Y and our feed is at Z".  Eventually publications would just throw any press releases they received into the trash, because they'd just be an annoyance.  They'd probably also unsubscribe to any feeds that contained too much crap.

Rohan

[/pd]

"Companies don't need press releases to make facts available to the
media. Not if they have websites"

Depends on what is being releases. F1000 need to walk the SOX's line .
In fact, any SEC trading company needs to be carefull on how
information is released. Inclusive of product info.