When is a Press Release Not a Press Release?

In another life, I was preparing an announcement that detailed a technology partnership effort between separate companies. Things were going pretty well. The requisite corporate approvals were being achieved at reasonable intervals. I'd written plenty of press releases by that time, but most of the efforts around "securing coverage" were handled by the PR agency or other personnel. I just needed to finalize the announcement. Standard operating procedure.

Then, there was...a complication. It seems that one of companies involved had a press release policy that stipulated it could only participate in press releases with technology partners when there was a joint customer that could be featured in the announcement as well. The documented solution in the release had detailed use cases and a clear value proposition, but no available reference customers. It was only a few days before the release had been scheduled to go out, and reporters had already been briefed and would be expecting the news to hit. Rock and a hard place.

One of the benefits of rapid rise of social media is that some companies do not (yet) have the same level of formalized guidance around blog posts as they do corporate announcements. This realization led to an idea. By repackaging the content as a blog post instead of a news release, we were still able to distribute the content to the media--along with other associated resources--without going against the explicit guidelines we were bound to follow.

Combined with direct outreach, we were able to get some coverage using social media channels to tell the story. Perhaps not as much if we'd been able to issue a formal announcement, but considering the alternative was to go back to the media to say "never mind" (and lose credibility with reporters/editors), this outcome was greatly preferred and considered a win for us.

The key takeaways for me?

• Companies--especially big corporations--are (still) getting a handle on social media, which is something savvy marketers may be able to take advantage of.
  
• The modern marketer/content creator can use a mix of traditional and emerging/social media to reach press audiences.
  
• When you have to list items in prose, use bullet points; they're easier to read.