PR Pollution: Regrettably Inevitable

Posted by runmark on 28/01/2010 under Blog | Read the First Comment

Every PR or marketing pro should read this report into “PR Pollution” by press release distribution specialists Realwire. It’s a tired old subject that refuses to die: Poorly targeted press releases have led to a breakdown in trust from the media. Key points:

- 1.7 billion irrelevant press release emails estimated to be received in total each year by UK and US journalists alone

- 78 per cent of press release emails are received by recipients to whom they are irrelevant

- 55 per cent of recipients have taken action to block a sender of news

(The study also features one of RunMarketing’s podcasts on pitching to journalists…)

As someone who works as both PR and journalist I receive some h-o-r-r-e-n-d-o-u-s pitches – mostly because inexperienced, junior staffers have been charged with pitching and often armed without the training. And I admit to blocking some people.

But then even with the plethora of media training out there – often from journalists – nothing seems to be changing. We had this debate 10 years ago, 5 years ago, yesterday. We’ll have it tomorrow, 5 years time and 10 years time…I blogged about it recently

At the end of the day, crap PR is good for good PR agencies, as they can stand out and build trust, and the crap PR firms will (hopefully) wither and die. PR won’t, however, as journalists find PRs valuable for most of their leads, copy and access, even though many will never admit that.

You can watch RealWire’s video below and listen to our podcast on how to write and distribute press releases.

An Inconvenient PR Truth from RealWire on Vimeo.