A Mainstay of Traditional PR is Rubbish

by David Henderson

closed It’s Friday, and I’m clearing out my email spam folder. Most of the stuff caught are press releases. For years, I’ve used a spam filter called SpamSieve. It’s the same technology used by most news outfits, and it magically sniffs out and trashes nearly all press releases. No surprise that in today’s digital world, mass and blindly distributed releases are treated as rubbish.

As I found in my research while writing my new book, Making News in the Digital Era, many if not most PR people today – especially at agencies – have no real or practical working media contacts or story pitching skills, and consequently, they rely heavily on blast email press release services like Vocus and others that do little more than create a glut of spam for anyone on their lists. Yet, in a trend missed by many traditional PR people, today’s online digital revolution offers many greater and more effective ways to capture attention for news.

Unfortunately, I got on those lists years ago and once on a Vocus or PRNewswire spam list, there’s no way of getting off. Not picking on Vocus or PRNewswire but none of these spam press releases services honors requests to opt-out. So, I regularly call attention to some of the dumb releases I receive.

Let’s take a look at some of the recent stuff … none of it relevant to my work:

Here’s one from announcing “World Pneumonia Day on Nov 2nd” from someone at Edelman.
Another shouts: “DON’T LET LINT AND DUST STAND IN THE WAY OF A PERFECT HAIR DAY! FIGHT HAIRDRYER BUILDUP WITH CYBER CLEAN HOME AND OFFICE!” It’s from Griffin PR. I believe that anything in all CAPS is hype.
The subject line of another press release says, “New Survey: More Than 2/3 of Marketers Bypassing Traditional Ads to Reach Customers Directly.” It’s from someone at Channel V Media, whatever that is.
A press release from an outfit called USA Cares shouts: USA Cares Announces Military Housing Lender Program. I’ve tried for years to get removed from the spam list of USA Cares with no luck.
Another from Integrity PR announces a “slim data USB card.” I always thought those things were called, USB data cards.

Anyway, you get the picture. I probably receive about 200 to 300 press releases a week, all blindly emailed with no purpose or follow up, and all of the releases are caught by SpamSieve. It’s deadly.

Press releases, while still a crutch used widely by lazy PR people, are today’s least effective tactic for getting attention … with few exceptions. One exception might be a brief release about earnings for a publicly traded company but even in that area, the digital era brings other and more effective ways to achieve meaningful results.

I would ask PR people to remove me from spam lists but, heck, they have no idea who they are blasting releases to. Like making sausage, they just write releases, click a mouse and let the spam service handle it with no consideration for return-on-investment to client or employer. At least sausage is more palatable, especially with spicy mustard.