Stop writing and distributing press releases. Please. They’re stupid, annoying, and useless. And according to an analysis by Christopher Penn of Shift Communications, they don’t work. I spent 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. During that time, I received 10,000 press releases. I estimate that about 200 had even the tiniest amount of…
There are press releases. Then there are out of body experiences. Cryptography firm Crown Sterling announced a new product called Time AI. It leaves ordinary buzzwords like “seamless” and “omnichannel” in the dust, reaching instead for a heady mix of mathematics, quantum computing, mysticism, and privacy handwringing. Let’s take a look. Commentary is mine. Crown…
A sex toy called Osé from the company Lora DiCarlo won an award at the Consumer Electronics Show. Then the show’s organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, took the award away. Lora DiCarlo founder Lora Haddock’s pointed, honest response is one of my favorite press releases of all time. Obligatory content warning: If it bothers you…
The Auckland, New Zealand police and Auckland Pride, an LGBTQ support organization, were unable to come to an agreement about police marching in the Pride parade. They did, however, produce one of the most oblique, passive, and ultimately pointless media releases ever posted. This is what happens when you’re not sure what to say, but…
Cision, which makes tools for PR professionals, will become a $2.4 billion publicly traded company through a maneuver with a capital company. They’re holding a call to explain it Monday at 11. If you read those 31 words, you know everything you need to about this news. Press releases tend toward fluff. But this one —…
Sometimes, when I boil down a piece of writing, I find nuggets of truth embedded within a matrix of jargon and bullshit. But sometimes, I just find nothing but platitudes, emptiness, and evidence of incompetence. That’s the apparent communications strategy of Revolt PR. Here’s what the press release says: Revolt PR believes it can help…
Matt Mullenweg, the originator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, is fighting with Avishai Abrahami, CEO of Wix. (Both companies make it easy to build web content.) The question driving this fight is the appropriate use of open source code. But what’s really at stake is reputation — and on that front, Abrahami’s wry commentary…
One company has proven itself up to the task of indiscriminately bombarding me with irrelevant and really awful press releases — Meltwater Press. Today, I ridicule them and their credulous clients. I’ve been conducting a science experiment. When I started this blog, I also created a new email address. I never use it to sign up for…
Why are you still doing press releases? And why are they so awful? In 20 years as an analyst, I received 10,000 press releases. I acted on four of them. But PR pros still craft releases and send them to wire services to clutter up everybody’s inboxes. They’re not just poorly read but poorly written, like this delete-provoking…