Press releases

[The Hut, via One Fast Buffalo]

For Immediate Release Fridays, PRNewser's original weekly series of posts has fallen by the wayside latey. Its a look at the bad news uploaded late Fridays to minimize coverage.

So when I saw a press release uploaded 10 minutes to midnight assuring customers that Pizza Hut will in fact, not change its name to "The Hut" I did some digging. Like BigK, Dunkin's new DD (double D, really?) and BK it's not always clear to the consumer if the new names are an attempt to skew younger, or a full corporate name changes.

The Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) chain may have bobbled a trade pitch, or the reporter misunderstood it, according to what I found on Google.

The name-change stories have been going on for a couple of weeks, culminating in a hilarious one from Consumerist to the delight of Star Wars fans everywhere (The Hut = The Hutt).

It appears the confusion stems from a Mediaweek story on June 7 about the use of The Hut for its marketing initiatives including in-store Hut TV.

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Stumbling on a new blog named NewsReleasesMentioningTwitter run by one Jonathan Evans at PRNewswire piqued my curiosity: how many press releases mention Twitter on a given day?

In my search of PRNewswire and three other services, I found items ranging from new Twitter-related products, to the company's contact info, to supportive feeds for ongoing things. Surprisingly, the lifestyley PRWeb had none for today, while BusinessWire lead the pack.

Here's what I found for June 8th, as of the time of this post:

30 on BusinessWire, including one about TweetGrade, the tool to measure a user's reach and influence

20 on PRNewswire including one announcing MLB.com's plan to Tweet the Draft tomorrow.

14 on Marketwire including one mentioning the talking Quizno's toaster

0 on PRWeb, though they had one on Friday announcing an affiliation between BrokerHunter.com and TwitterJobSearch.com

[Twitter art via WebWormz]

CNBC is busy promoting a new documentary, "The Oprah Effect." Airing this Thursday, the documentary will take a close look at businesses who have been featured on the show, "to explain Oprah's unparalleled impact on their bottom line, their secrets to getting on her show and how the Oprah Effect continues to translate her brand and others into big business and big dollars." Today the network released a video interview between Meredith Vieira of "Today" and CNBC's Carl Quintanilla, who will anchor the documentary.

According to a network spokesman the video was created "only for this news release," and this is the first time the network has debuted video footage exclusively via press release.

Certainly many PRNewser readers have heard this phrase from clients or bosses in the past: "Get me on Oprah!" Now, you can view first hand what exactly achieving this PR milestone has done for various businesses, and how they got on the show in the first place.

Every company is a "leading provider of something" or they "leverage new technologies that will revolutionize 'X' industry." This is the world of press release jargon, and as PR pros we - sometimes along with pressure from our clients - are to blame for it.

Online marketing strategist David Meerman Scott decided to conduct research on all of these so called "buzzwords." From his blog:

I have just completed an analysis of all 711,123 press releases distributed by North American companies in 2008 through Business Wire, Marketwire, GlobeNewswire, and PR Newswire. The project looked at 325 gobbledygook phrases from a variety of sources, with the detailed analysis on the number of uses for each phrase done using Dow Jones Insight.

So, what were the top ten?

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An astonishing 11% of PR people surveyed by press release wire service BusinessWire answered "weeks" when asked how long it takes them to write and get approval for a press release.

Luckily the bulk, 49% (pie chart above), answered several days. The one-question poll was issued as a way to get customers thinking about adding a little extra time and money to optimize for Search.

If you're in corporate PR, you can probably relate to the 11%. You may want to apply the parlor game of my former colleague, head of the Zusman Group consultantcy Barry Zusman in these instances: the person responsible for circulating the 10th draft of a release has to buy drinks for all concerned.

Glenn Selig, founder of The Publicity Agency wants you to know that his clients' "breaking news alerts will first be sent with a Twitter message (known as a Tweet) and then followed by a full release or statement."

His press release, "Florida PR Firm Utilizes Social Networking Site to Update Media, Land Clients Publicity" has the details and promises rapid-fire information about his marquee client, accused serial wife-killer Drew Peterson.

If you're wondering why a firm with 5 tweets, 44 followers and zero followees (@PublicityAgency) would issue an official release, it's because Selig also owns the particular service used, PRNewsChannel.

This past Friday was a tough one for uncovering buried press releases.

While the economy is grim, Black Friday is still a biggie for retail and business journalists. There were indeed, many releases uploaded late on Friday touting things like increased traffic to online circular sites as shoppers prepped for battle.

But the battle was literal and the news grim as one Wal-Mart shopper was trampled to death, and two Toys R Us shoppers fatally shot each other.

Toys R Us uploaded a brief statement. Wal-Mart's statement was a bit more specific.

As I write this, the search 'Wal-Mart AND death' yields 2,500 news stories and 'Toys R Us AND shooting' yields 254. We can only hope people keep their cool next year, and retailers don't continue to market Black Friday as some kind of necessary, frenzied starting point of the holiday season.

Meanwhile, there are surprisingly few press releases up dealing with the attacks in Mumbai India. There was a statement from the Anti-Defamation League. Also, Wikipedia has a thorough round-up of the worldwide reactions. A Pakistani paper details the bumbling of the official statements by India. Also see "The Perils of Blaming Pakistan" in TIME for more information on the delicate situation.

Questions that everyone want an easy answer to, such as "Which press service should I use?" often don't have an easy answer. However, that doesn't stop us from debating them, which is what we will do in this post.

PR-Squared's Todd Defren has already conducted a pretty thorough review of press release services in terms of social media releases, and of course there was a bit of a firestorm created by PRNewsire's recent study claiming that their releases receive more pickup than competing wires. The competition is getting tighter, that's for sure. We've also noticed quite a few releases going out on the much cheaper (but no frills) service PRWeb.

Now comes a list of free sevices, courtesy of Daniel Durazo (hat tip: Brian Solis).

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The debate among PR pros as to which wire service provides the best service and distribution, or "bang for the buck" entered a new chapter this week, with a study released by PR Newswire, claiming the service generates "more media pick-up and higher volume of coverage" than competitors Business Wire, Marketwire and Nasdaq-owned PrimeNewswire.

Among the study findings were, "Press releases distributed by PR Newswire get used by media more often than copy from competing services and generate more clips when they are picked up," and that "Press releases transmitted by PR Newswire were used 55% of the time, versus Marketwire's 43% pickup rate, Business Wire's rate of 38% and a rate of 37% by PrimeNewswire."

"Our content has been referred to in more blog posts, Diggs and Delicious Links than any other commercial wire service," said PR Newswire COO Dave Armon in a statement. "PR Newswire has the highest Google page rank in our industry, and has been referenced as a source on Wikipedia more than any other wire service as well."

Reached for comment, Tom Becktold, SVP of Marketing for Business Wire questioned the study's crediblity, telling PRNewser, "If anyone is going to hire a research firm, you're going to discuss with that firm in advance what info you want to find, and produce a study to support that." Becktold also claimed the study was a direct sales pitch. "They sent it to Businesswire clients as well, that is where we heard about it," he said. "So they're not doing it as an altruistic, 'lets see where we're at' kind of thing. They're using it to sell against us." A call placed to Marketwire had not been returned at the time of this post.

There are a whole host of questions here related to research methodology, including: does more necessarily equal better? Were all of the releases analyzed sent over the same type of wire (i.e. national, regional)? And finally, what about media relations? Press releases don't always get picked up by themselves.

That being said, there is one thing that all of the wire services should agree on: content is king. If you don't have a well written release with news value, it doesn't matter which wire service you use, no one will care.

There's not much bad news to report in this edition of For Immediate Release Fridays. However, Giant and Stop & Shop want to let you know there might be pieces of plastic in the 54 oz boxes of Pepperoni Hot Pockets.

Meanwhile, the political releases are kicking up ahead of the Democratic convention in Denver. The DNC has a pop quiz of questions McCain won't answer. Groups inside the hall seek discussion including the Mayors, Nurses, and New America thinktank, while Operation Rescue (anti-baby killers) promise to get arrested, repeatedly outside.

In better PR news, you can now follow a Donkey and Goat on Twitter.