In public relations (PR), one of the main target audiences is the media, because it is thanks to the media that it is possible to reach the largest part of the audience. The oldest and most effective communication tool in cooperation with journalists has always been considered a press release, today also called a news or news release.
A news release, which is written by a public relations specialist on behalf of an organization or client, is basically a news story, written in a news style, and is distributed to the media with the aim of achieving further publicity. (Kelleher, T. Public Relations, 2018)
With the development of media types and digital communication, a rhetorical question is increasingly being raised in the public space: is the press release alive? Namely, is this PR external communication tool the most relevant and effective for communicating with modern media and journalists? This question is asked by PR professionals, both the media themselves and entrepreneurs, in search of increasingly effective communication methods for cooperation with all target audiences.
There are various claims about this communication tool, one of which is that it is outdated.
“Almost everything in the world of communication has changed in the last decades, years, hours. And yet one relic of an old tactic has survived well past its expiration date: the press release. This old-fashioned sales tool made a lot of sense in a slower era,” Forbes magazine wrote in 2016, leaning more towards the fact that the aforementioned SA external communication tool is outdated. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariansalzman/2016/04/08/press-release-dead-or-alive/?sh=39e4c5446bbe )
Today’s truly hyperconnected world, the speed of communication, and the ambiguous discussions about this communication tool prompted me to do a little research by posting a survey on Facebook and LinkedIn. The aim of this survey was to find out who is really right: those who say that the press release is still an effective tool for working with journalists, or those who say that the press release is now history.
A total of 165 respondents participated in the survey – not many, but it provides an insight into what communication professionals think about this issue.
76.5% of respondents answered that they still use a press release in their daily work with journalists. This is a large indicator from the total number to conclude that the press release is not history at all, but today. This result also correlates with the results of the question “Do you consider the press release to be an effective communication tool for communicating with the media?”, where it can be seen that 84.8% of the survey participants marked the answer “yes”.
Perhaps the discussions about the effectiveness of press releases today are caused by their quality, namely their content. 79.5% of respondents emphasize that a press release is a news release, which means that a large role should be played by the circumstances in which we create a press release, namely, whether what we want to convey to journalists and a larger audience is always news or a daily event of a company or organization that is important to us, but is not unique in a global context.
Therefore, in conclusion, I can say with complete certainty that a press release is not a “dead” external communication tool.
Additional information: https://www.ereleases.com/pr-fuel/coke-killing-press-release/
