Disclosure, so as not to protect the guilty: I’m the head of communications at Altium. And we’ve been tussling (struggling) with these opportunities for some time. I don’t think we’re there yet, and your blog, Brian, really brought into focus what we need to do – so thanks for that. And, to the points raised by others, the future is all about having relevant conversations with people. In communications, that means creating value in what you have to say. And, only the reader knows what ‘value’ is, so those of us on the vendor side have to get it right, and not just hope for the best.

In your example, you cite what I believe is the real purpose of editors and bloggers alike. To find something that they believe has value to people – a level of understanding that does not come from raw information. In your case, a press release triggered that, but I would suggest that there are better ways to encourage that form of dialog.

Most good articles (in my opinion) have an educational purpose. The reader should understand something at the end of it that was not clear or evident before. This could come from an aggregation of information from several sources, or the impact that a particular development could have on the way a technology is used etc. What I need is access to information that can allow me to do this in an efficient and effective manner. This kind of information is deeper than would be contained in a press release, so I either need a more detailed source of information that I can access (without NDA), or access to the people who can provide it (as was the case with your client).

As you can see, I don’t have all of the answers, but I do know that sending a press release to me is very unlikely to get the desired response. I have tried to write up many potential solutions to this and so far at the end of each of them I reach a conclusion that they suffer from many of the same problems. I agree that at the end of the day I may need some kind of trigger that a company has something important to say, but most of the time I just want access to information from which I can extract what I think is interesting. So I also need the ability to pull information.

The old joke about ‘delete’ being the first key to get worn blank on a journo’s keyboard is not actually a joke. We just take solace in the fact that fewer trees are being toppled to pay for the ‘incrementals’ these days. The old Electronics Times could receive several hundred pieces of mail a day in the run-up to an event like Electronica, and 99.9% of it was binned even then.

As for NDAs, they simply have no place in the communications industry. Embargos, yes, but NDAs that limit what you can say publicly in any way beyond when you can say it should simply be rebuffed.

And slagging PRs over a lot of this smacks somewhat of killing the messenger. The problem is not necessarily there but sited among the people who direct them and have outdated expectations and an outdated sense of how things work. It’s hard for PRs to talk about their internal and external masters publicly, but just about everyone I’ve ever met in tha business can tell you plenty of horror stories about releases they have been forced to issue after warning that they were more likely to irritate than inform or even mildly interest the community.

Welcome to the club.

Paul

This is the blog post I wish I had written

I had a similar conversation with a fellow blogger earlier this week, one who is more in the sales and marketing side, about the waning value of press releases and PR people in general. I’m more new to blogging that you are, so the PR attention is new to me. But as far as DAC was concerned, PR people added little value beyond what a good admin would have done in trying to set up meetings. The ones that sat in my meetings with me said nary a word.

As for NDAs, I know they are needed in some cases, but they are certainly overused. Most companies would get more benefit from the positive coverage resulting from releasing the “family jewels” than any competitive harm.

Harry