Day-to-day flood of irrelevant content possible thanks to refined techniques of information distribution can give an average media receiver communication paralysis. How, in this situation, are the authors of public relations releases doing to interest the receiver?

Each one of us knows this state. At some moment every incoming message starts to blur into one huge incoherent senseless message whose contents stay in our minds for just a short period of time and then vaporizes until the next attack. In the buzz of everyday news we single out only those with an exceptional character - spectacular catastrophes, celebrities’ divorces, irritating political events. In the meantime, public relations threads steal among those exposed news. Do they stand a chance of being noticed.

From me to you, from you to us

For certain you need to remember the obvious truth - more people will become interested in the downfall of the government or a new rocket launch than in the fact that some company gained new customers, more probably if this particular company operated in a local market. In the case of bigger companies or global concerns this is facilitated by the fact that their every move is observed by the media, financial analysts, the stock exchange or shareholders. Those companies also can afford coordinated advertising campaigns in many media using such solutions as ambient media or buzz marketing. A large part of the whole advertising message is still a public relations text, a press release sent to the media.

According to latest research at least 40% of newspaper information comes from the PR sources. How does the situation look like in the Internet? Definitely worse, since this is a medium where information distribution is easier, and web services not having an expanded editor team are doomed to aggregating such news types. Cooperation between PR cells and portals involves reciprocal service exchange. PR teams prepare news and administrators publish it because usually they do not have their own texts. Sometimes it turns out that there is no need for editing the received news. It is just published as it is. Both parties are content. But where is the receiver in all his?

We’ve lost the reader

Contemporary trends in the net show that the receiver starts to organize themselves against such situation. The Slogan of Web 2.0 may be some kind of desperate attempt to distract the readers’ attention. What is an idea of collective editing if not a concept aiming at emphasizing the role of receiver in the process of communication? And what do the PR cells do in most companies? They keep producing standard texts, and after that they send them in all possible directions hoping that someone will publish them. Of course, it does not mean that the text will be read or remembered.

It is enough to publish a press release at the homepage of digg.com in a standard version. Even if the topic is attractive, one can easily notice how can artificial, banal language used to write it put off such information. And what do pressrooms look like at the websites of most companies? Do the news published in it reach anyone besides few specialists and owners of web portals counting on free contents?

According to Michael Haller, a German media researcher, almost half of German journalists dealing with political and economic matters are PR specialists. Journalism turns into more or less sophisticated disguising in words new which is banal, from the point of view of a user. Is there anything exciting about new cell battery or innovative ingredients of a salad at McDonald’s? The chasm between a journalist and a PR specialist becomes less and less clear. News in press, TV and Internet are more and more often inspired by companies and more and more often they have the schematic shape worked out by PR cells. In the meantime, readers want valuable, unique and written with live language news. Not getting it, they start to organize it for themselves (User-Generated Content, Consumer-Generated Media), finding their own sources or compiling the news which is accessible and editing it critically. Without propaganda and pompous language.

Is there any way out of his situation?

Promotion through contents

The thing seems banal and obvious. You should give the reader what is attractive and valuable for them - interesting contents that promotional message will be wrapped in, obviously deprived of PR newspeak, adjusted to the style of the whole message. Example? Writing an article on the battery we add a trait showing how the battery’s shape and functionality changed over the last few years. We add texts to the pressroom which have additional informative, educational or fun content to the press release.

The news prepared in that way are much easier to promote in the Internet. What will blog users interested in IT choose? Fragments of schematic messages on new solutions in the new cellphone or its full description with changes and additional information that can be found nowhere else but at the producer’s site?

We should finally accept that in the situation of permanent overload of messages the news carrying no attractive, valuable information stand no chance of reaching the receiver and disappear in the ocean of news that are produced every day.

We can help you find the reader again: nb@heureka.pl

Author: Marcin Wilkowski
e-PR Manager

Links:

At least 40 % of press releases come from PR agencies or marketing departments of companies, offices and associations
http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/1351535,720,kioskart.html?drukuj=1

Service devoted to schemes and manipulations in press releases

http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/prwatch.html

Information receivers started to organize them in their own way

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content

Consumers take matters in their own hands, share experiences with using the products, build solutions making it possible to choose the most interesting offers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer-generated_media