A Vision of an Embargo-Free World
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Embargoes suck, we know. But they also “work” when companies are trying to raise awareness about some new product, service, etc. There are cases where no PR is needed, because the news is so big it’ll get written about by the mere fact it happens. But these incidents are extremely rare. The specific purpose of the embargo is to maximize the potential coverage, both by quantity and quality of outlet. Why? It’s a simple equation – more coverage equals more awareness equals more potential customers equals more actual customers equals more healthy business.
Also, in order to put one topic to bed, there is unquestionably a need for a quantity of outlets. There is no single blog or news organization whose content reaches the entire potential audience a company would like to get in front of. Further, as the “business of news” has become ridiculously competitive, many news outlets will simply not cover a topic if they are not one of the absolute first to do so (which isn’t exactly great for their readers, but that’s a different story).
So let’s envision what the world of news and content distribution might look like without any embargoes whatsoever. In this world, there are NO pre-briefings done, ever. A company has news, it can choose how to disseminate it (blog, press release, twitter, video, etc). Journalists pick up on stories through the medium(s) of their choosing, and write stories as they see fit. Please note there are quite a few generalizations here, and as such there are always exceptions.
Scenario 1: HUGE BREAKING IMPORTANT STORY (e.g. Steve Jobs sick, Microsoft buys Yahoo, Twitter is down, etc)
In this case, it’s fairly likely that the news will propagate to a lot of outlets. When the content is “too big to ignore” it will get lots and lots of coverage. Note that these types of events rarely have embargoes today anyway, since it’s hard to contain/control something that’s quite so widespread.
This is a win for journalists, the company with the news, and readers all of whom get what they want out of the picture.
Scenario 2: Medium-sized news (e.g. new startup launches something interesting/innovative, new features added to existing popular site/service, Twitter is down, etc) – released by blog post (or press release). A list of selected media/journalists are also emailed about the news at the moment it is released.
Here we have a classic race situation. Those who can post fastest will do so (let’s assume 1-3 “newsbreakers” cover it), and likely with the least amount of added thought/perspective. As a result of the initial coverage, no other “newsbreaker” sites write it up (“it’s already on XXX, so we’re going to skip”). Later in the day a few more pieces are added, with some additional perspective or insight on the topic. Also, some of the initial sites’ stories are updated to include additional commentary. On rare occasion, the topic is interesting enough to get additional coverage, but for the most part it’s hit-and-run, and fades out of memory rapidly.
This is a loss for journalists (more on this in a second), the company with the news, and readers (who will be less likely to find out about new things because their news outlets of choice become less likely to cover it).
Incidentally, this is probably the primary area where embargoes are used today, as they effectively help get wider coverage for the same content, not to mention deeper thought/investigation into the topic. Due to the desire to be “first”, however, journalists simply don’t have the incentive to write more in-depth pieces (much to their chagrin, for the most part). I’d also assume that this world would create even MORE unwanted email flooding journalists’ inboxes, as the mass of PR people have virtually no other mechanism of bringing stories to their attention.
Scenario 3: Same as above, but nobody is emailed about the news, it’s only released via blog/PR/twitter/etc, and anyone who “wants to find it” can do so.
This is the ultimate “free for all” that many new media people seem to be in love with, at least in theory. Here the burden is now on the journalists to track companies they are interested in. The fundamental issue here is the natural bias (people write about content/companies they like) which develops. Further, startups who aren’t “connected” in some way have even more trouble of getting awareness about their new venture.
This is a major loss for everyone involved, other than those who are “in” and benefit even more from having connections. Overall, less people write about less varied things, and less readers find out about less stuff.
Ultimately I keep hearing anecdotally how bloggers and other media would like to have things simply be open and freeform in this manner (get some sleep MG!!!), but in practice it seems utterly contradictory. It seems understated when I say there’s already a tremendous amount of noise out there, and I fundamentally believe that it’s the relationships built between media and quality PR folks that helps create signal out of noise.
Scenario 4: Minor news (e.g. unimportant hiring, minor technology improvement, Twitter is down, etc)
I see this playing out per #2/3 above, except with almost no coverage happening whatsoever. This is the area where I think getting rid of embargoes is probably beneficial, as it will help naturally weed out this kind of fluff and nonsense. Companies and their PR teams will have to stop with the old-school mentality of issuing press releases for the sake of issuing press releases.
This is a win mostly for readers, as journalists will still get spammed (in the short term), and companies will actually need to dig deeper into the strategy bucket than they have in the past (which is, of course, a long term good thing).
Other thought on the topic: The In Crowd gets In-ner
Let’s face it, there’s most certainly a “who do you know?” effect present in the high-tech industry, be it for deal-making, venture capital, press coverage, or all of the above. While it is very possible to insert new companies and people into these circles, it’s harder than ever to build something without some degree of connectivity. And as much as most of the people would very much like to meet new folks (I sincerely believe it is a set of extremely welcoming communities), the fact of the matter is people are just plain busy. If you aren’t lucky enough to bump into someone at a meetup or event or other random activity, it can be a big uphill battle to get any attention. By removing the ability for “new players” to work with connectors at PR firms efficiently,they will inherently have more trouble gaining any attention (and the “meh” startups from “connected” people will unfortunately gain far more attention than they truly merit). One of my greatest concerns over any concept of removing embargoes, PR teams, etc, is that I think it will ultimately hurt “the little guys” much more than anyone else.
I’m sure I’m missing a few scenarios and possibilities out there, but as far as I can see it, the relationship between companies (big and small), PR teams (internal or external), journalists, and readers is supposed to be a healthy one (we shouldn’t need Robert’s list of tricks!). Any time one of those groups makes moves to hurt the others, it ultimately hurts the system itself. And the system as we have it today could definitely use some improvement, but I’d rather see the energy spent on improving the checks & balances and accountability structure. It’s not specifically the embargo process that needs work, it’s a broader approach to how we think about the ethics and responsibility people throughout the industry should employ. Whether it’s little blogs or huge outlets, PR firms or internal teams, everyone has a responsibility of playing by some system of rules.
