Stage Two Consulting

Today, for the first time, Bug Labs issued a press release.  Simultaneously, a blog post went up, with virtually identical content. I’ve blogged in the past with my thoughts on the slow demise of the press release as a communications method, but I thought I’d go into more detail for this specific event.   First the WHY, then the WHAT/HOW.

Why?  Well, we really wanted to get the word out pre-CES that the company has news.  Not only is there a CES booth, but we’ve also got a table at the ShowStoppers event (still my favorite “tie-in” event with the big shows).  To-date, we’ve used the blog and emails as our only forms of communication.  I like blogs and emails because they are inherently two-way communications vehicles, as opposed to press releases, which are outbound only.  In fact, prior to this release Bug Labs had received 196 “major” pieces of coverage, not including TV and print publications.

However, our rolodex only goes so far, and word of mouth only gets you so many contacts.  Sooner or later, you want to be able to cross the marketing chasm of reaching out beyond your circle of influence.  We decided for the thousands of people coming to CES plus several hundred at ShowStoppers, it was important to use a communication method that would hit a wider audience.  Thus, the press release.

However, we didn’t do it in a vacuum.  In fact, I wrote the blog post first, then turned it into the press release.  We also didn’t use a very traditional format, instead kept it like a conversation.  If you open both the blog post and release, you can see just how similar they are. Again, in our attempt to have “open marketing” we chose to keep the same information we’d release via our blog as we would in the “official press release”.

Will this help?  Not sure.  Our news was picked up by Engadget, Gizmodo, Geek.com, and others, but they were all individually briefed anyway.  I will come back and report on the results once the show is behind us.  While I still don’t feel the press release is “dead”, I am certainly not convinced it’ll make a “huge” difference.  Then again, all it takes is one great piece of coverage!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Clients, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.