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11.10.09 Why Do PR Mailings Often Get Misused?  By Neville Hobson A timely story about that distribution channel so often misused by the PR industry - email. In an article published in Journalism.co.uk (and elsewhere), Iain Fleming, who works for Newslink, a news aggregation and delivery service in the UK, writes about the results of a survey he carried a few months ago on people's attitudes to the email that PR agencies and others send them. Probably little surprise at some of Fleming's findings: [...] the results of my small survey - including responses from 101 editors, section editors, journalists and IT managers - showed just how much those working on news desks disliked the PR industry - despite their growing reliance on it. So much of what is being thrown at them is completely irrelevant - if it gets to them at all. What does get through - and 95 per cent reported problems with email of which around a quarter said it was 'every day' - is sent in ways which either crash their systems or can't be opened because their employers simply cannot afford to upgrade software on 200 computers as regularly as a small PR agency of just a few people can - and does. And that is just for 'traditional' text and pictures. The message that a national newspaper can happily use a picture - even across several columns - if it is only a few hundred Kb in size has not got through to the PR people, who keep sending out 10Mb files at a time. Move on to 'new' media and the situation is even worse, with the same issues of incompatible file types, too large files, poor quality content and stuff that is 'just not newsworthy' topping the list of complaints. A senior manager within ITV told me just last week how one station struggled for several hours to get video sent by a fire brigade into a format suitable for broadcast, but ran out of time and the bulletin went out minus the footage. What a picture. Read the full story in its gory detail. I like to look beyond the dismal picture Fleming paints. There are great opportunities for the few - yes, there are some - who get it right. Comments About the Author: Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology. Neville is a UK-based communicator, blogger and podcaster. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: NevilleHobson.com. |
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