Your PR Architect

I don't want to talk about Matt, Harvey, Kevin, Charlie, or Bill. Recent headlines have created a Sargasso Sea of sexual misdeeds and dismissed journalists. It's not a great climate in which to send news releases about vague "solutions" and nude cooking. But if you need a break from the misadventures of fallen media giants, the PR world can offer a brief respite. If you're willing to wade through some challenging prose. After reading this one from Gold Stream Solutions -- an agency that includes PR among its areas of expertise -- I'm starting to understand what's killing news releases. Lousy writing. News-free copy. Vague information. Quoting a CEO with no last name. I didn't realize CEOs qualified for the federal witness protection program. If that's not sufficiently amusing, consider this release, received by my friend Tracy Schuhmacher, who writes about food and drink for the Rochester (NY) Democrat & Chronicle. It's from th...

To:  Michael Ferro, Chairman       Tribune Publishing, a.k.a., tronc cc: Blog Readers Subject: Invitation: How to Communicate Dear Mike: I invite you and your communications team to drop by my office at the university.  My schedule's Chicago Tribune Building, By Stuart Seeger [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons flexible 'til late August. But act fast. Because as your company transforms to some digital communications-moneymaking internet punchline, your recent news release tells me Tribune Publishing has lost its grasp of how to communicate in English. Your June 2 news release,  Tribune Publishing Announces Corporate Rebranding, Changes Name to Tronc,  sets a new low in incomprehensible jargon. Experienced PR people write releases that readers will understand. The writer who pumped out this horrid excuse for a press release has no grasp of this.  It's perfectly fine to r...

My first full-time reporting job came from a small weekly paper on Long Island. Called Suffolk Life, the paper served as the launch pad for the careers of a number of superb journalists and scholars . And me. No one becomes wealthy working at a weekly paper. Because he couldn't pay me very much, the publisher, the late great Dave Wilmott , Jr., allowed me to gas up from the same ancient Esso-esque pump that filled his delivery trucks. A few years later, as a public relations practitioner, I continued my appreciation of weeklies, especially when promoting lifestyle products and how to use them. My rationale: place a story in a daily paper, and that edition will likely be discarded when the next day's paper arrives. Place the same story in a weekly, and that paper lives in readers' homes for a full week before its replacement shows up. I get seven chances to grab your attention, not just one. Local weeklies. (c) DKassnoff, 2016. Today, Suffolk Life is out of busin...

Every few months, someone's predicting the demise of the press release. Photo by Dustin Lee via Unsplash.com. See more at http://bit.ly/Free-RetroSupply-Goods And, if they're an editor or blogger or journalist, I think: baloney. My colleague Denny Wilkins shared with me a "press releases are dead"  post from Medium . The writer argues that issuing news releases is a zombie activity. Something PR people do automatically. A practice that cannot be killed.  And, like most who call for an end to news releases, the writer bemoans the flood of releases that clutter most editors' email in-boxes. He praises videos and Tweets that tell an organization's story digitally, and therefore "better." Because Tweets and videos don't clutter his in-box. Stop whining. You receive an over-abundance of releases because your employer gutted the editorial staff. You're now receiving releases those departed editors no longer read. Because they'r...

You've got to admire an online news release distribution channel called 24-7 Press Release. They're honest about their service: they take a news release you write, and distribute it to media outlets via a newswire-style service. What they won't do is also pretty clear: "Please do not attempt to contact 24-7 Press Release Newswire. We are unable to assist you with any information regarding this release." In other words: "We aren't the writers or people quoted in the news release you're reading. We're not set up for media relations." Honest? You bet. Helpful? Not so much, at least if you  read releases on 24-7 Press Release -- in this case, "Fresh Design Studio is the First Millennial Agency in the Midwest" .  Millennials, I guess. Courtesy: http://www.todomktblog.com/ 2013/11/millennials-marketing-mkt.html The release's lead was a head-scratcher."Fresh Design Studio, LLC, a leading creative agency, ann...

Kmart talks "asset light" and "member-centric" while removing services I stopped in at Kmart to buy a shirt. And I discovered  they'd removed the walk-up electronic price scanners that helped shoppers verify item prices and discounts. I now needed to wander the floor, hoping to uncover an employee with a pricing gun. Good luck with finding floor personnel at any Kmart. Really? At a time when retailers should be doing everything to build engagement with consumers, Kmart is removing most of its ways to deliver value to customers. Seems counter-intuitive to a retailer that touts a "Shop Your Way" connection with customers.  No store generates more paper at the register than Kmart. (c) DKassnoff At the checkout, the cashier announced to a fellow clerk, "I'm clocking out at five," before handing me a wad of auto-printed coupons and promotions. Five slips of junk for products I'd never buy. If there's a PR strateg...

I was feeling a little blue the other day. So I looked online for something to amuse me. A news release with poor prose usually brings a smile to my face. I didn't need to look far. At MyPRGenie.com, I found sentences like these: "The advancement in science and technology has escalated the living standard of the people to far greater heights."  "Thousands of customers have already made it the integral part of their life and many more are on the verge of getting it soon." "Why is the reason that this USB Adjust Angle has received such a substantial response within a short period of time? Well, many people still wonder; however, the users have already got the answers." These aren't the observations of a drunken platinum futures salesperson in Des Moines. They are all direct excerpts from a news release for a "Conveniently Adjustable Mini USB Adjust Angle for Night Book Reading." The product is a run-of-the-mill USB-powered lamp ...

As a kid, I loved Alpha-Bits, the cold ready-to-read cereal consisting of all 26 alphabet letters. (That's not a typo. I think it helped develop my love of reading and writing.) So when I read this news release: Modernizing Medicine and Miraca Life Sciences Debut EMA Urology EMR System | Business Wire -- I had a flashback to my Alpha-Bits days. There are four acronyms in the lead paragraph. And they're easily confused by a business desk editor. Especially if it's Monday morning. "EMR," for example, is the stock symbol for Emerson Electric Co., as well as Electronic Medical Records. In addition to the company's use of EMA for "electronic medical assistant," it's also widely used as an acronym for European Medicines Agency, the Environmental Media Association, a significant ad agency based in Syracuse, NY., and MTV's European Music Awards. Also, MLS abbrevates the Multiple Listings Service used in real estate. News flash:  people...

I don't know how a startup PR company can claim to have 330,000 media contacts. Email addresses, sure. But I've been doing PR for more than 30 years, and I'd be stretched to say I actually know 10,000 media contacts. You need to earn those relationships, not merely collect a list of email addresses and shepherd them via software. That's what Cision does. By André Karwath aka Aka (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5  (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons But, when an ambitious company called  PR Zebra tweeted me and asked for "support" for their concierge-style PR business, I checked out their website, not just their thunderclap.it crowd-sourcing link. They promise you local, regional, and national coverage. And they've posted a few news releases, often for small business owners and entrepreneurs. They offer a three-tiered pricing strategy that's relatively affordable. Like a lawn service. Nothing wrong with this ap...

No editor is going to pick up the following two news releases. But, I will -- although not for the reasons they'd prefer. Writing a news release is easy, if you believe web-based PR services that will post whatever you hand them. Writing a news release that editors will consider seriously? That's tougher. Look, for example, at "Slide Share Publishes News About Serial Entrepreneur Vince Thadani," found on MyPRGenie.com. This news release promises "interesting news about the legendary commercial figure Vince Thadani ." And it never delivers. For starters, the mechanics are wrong. You don't use your email address as a dateline. You don't use two cities -- New York and San Francisco -- as datelines. You should think twice about quoting a self-written SlideShare presentation as a news article. ( Hint: SlideShare.com doesn't post news. ) And billing yourself as a "serial" anything isn't a wise strategy, if what you're really do...

Is it worth shouting about an award if you aren't among the Top Ten winners? Today, Apple is the world's No. 1 Brand, according to Interbrand, a brand consulting agency (surprise!) that annually assigns an economic value to the best-known global brands. This year, Apple bounced long-time top dog Coca-Cola off the Global Brands summit, landing it just below Google at No. 2. (Read the whole list here. ) Business awards are our industry's cottage industry. A publication or organization looking to gain credibility creates some form of award competition, invites nominees, recognizes the winning companies at a banquet or news conference -- and then tries to leverage the relationship into an exchange of cash. Buying an ad or a membership. Licensing the award logo for use on packaging or in ads. And so on. Everyone likes recognition. Even if it's not cheap. Once J.D. Power recognizes your company as tops in customer satisfaction, you need to pay a minimum five-figu...