The song remains the same

By Tom Kirkham

Having previously talked about ‘the subject line of death’ from the journalist perspective, I started thinking about the PRO’s equivalent.  One candidate has got to be “Major press outreach planned for release v1.5307”.  Receiving this email from a client is sure to strike fear into the heart of even the hardiest B2B tech PR practitioner because, while Coldplay would appear to be living proof that yes, it is possible to release the same thing over and over again and still get reams of press coverage, this isn’t necessarily the case in our line of work.

Pressure to publicise a particular product/upgrade can come from many places within an organisation, and not necessarily from the people controlling the marketing calendar.  From a technical standpoint, there’s often good reason for this – v1.5307 may look identical and do essentially the same job, but behind the scenes, months of hard work have gone into tightening virtual nuts and bolts in order to make it more efficient and secure. 

Problem is, most IT journalists are not code junkies, and no amount of spin is going to make them cover a new software release on its own.  But this is often a hard lesson for companies to learn, because even if v1.5307 has sunk like the proverbial

le(a)d zeppelin, there’s every chance you’ll soon be asked to announce v1.5308 and v1.5309 as well. 

So, where should the line be drawn with these things?  I mean, from the amount of downloading my computer does, it seems as though Vista is being updated every single day, and with many security apps, there are new malware definitions rolled out every five minutes.  What’s worth announcing and what’s not?

The simple fact is that while technology is constantly being improved, development happens gradually. No bad thing in itself (if it ain’t broke...), but from a messaging perspective, it can be quite difficult to keep people interested.  Subsequently, one of the biggest challenges of tech PR, and indeed of tech journalism, is to continually find new angles on and new ways of talking about what are often the same old topics. 

What this means is that companies have to look outside of development cycles and production schedules if they want the world to care about what they do.  They need to understand that they don’t operate in a vacuum, and that context is everything – could their latest software release be important in terms of new legislation, changing market conditions, or an emerging trend? 

And this is where the good PRO can earn their stripes because often, it’s up to us to make these type of connections, particularly in local markets.  Believe me, it’s not only good PR, but it’s better for your sanity and general self-esteem.  That is, unless you enjoy the sound of journalists’ phones being slammed down before you can get to the end of that release number...

Comments

[Marlon the midget]

They’re even releasing other peoples stuff now!
http://timesnews.typepad.com/news/2008/06/coldplay-the-so.html