Here’s a challenge to the traditional Public Relations process at most companies. Despite all of the fragmentation and multplication of information resources, most businesses are still pursuing the age-old PR methodology of spitting out press releases as the primary method of media relations. Well, we’ve jut completed an interesting audit of one of our clients. In 2004, this company put out nearly 400 press releases–more than one a day. After analyzing media coverage, we discovered that although they distributed more press releases than any of their top competitors that year, they actually had a lower share of coverage than any of their top competitors.
It’s going to be hard to change the attitude of CEOs who only judge the effectiveness of their PR by whether or not they find the latest release on Yahoo!, but clearly more strategic media relations methodologies are mission critical. That’s always been true, but now we have the metrics to prove it.
I think that the PR industry will soon undergo some big changes. More and more people are becoming disenchanted with paying $5000 -$25000 a month to PR firms with mediocre results.
I wrote a book, and the amount of money that the publishing focused PR companies wanted was a JOKE. And no promises of anything or any results. I could take the amount of money they wanted, go to Vegas…and have better cash return than I would have gotten for them promoting my book.
So you ask what’s happenning to PR…I think the better question is who is going to be the first PR firm to come up with a new model and leave the others in the dust?