Press releases

Recognizing the adage that usability is everything, PRWeb announced today their new interface for uploading multimedia press releases.

Their old interface for uploading content was created prior to the era of the social media press release (SMPR). The company's user experience people wanted the form to look like the finished product, even giving it a clunky acronym for "what you see is what you get," WYSIWYG. Pronounced Wiseywhyge? Meaning, there would be no learning curve for new users. Anyone switching from one press release service to the another can attest to wrestling with the jumble of drop-down menus with hundreds of choices on proprietary interfaces

This appears to be parent company Vocus's (NASDAQ: VOCS) move to make the lower cost, more lifestyle-focused PRWeb service more attractive as they compete with PRNewswire, BusinessWire, Marketwire and upstart PitchEngine for press release dollars.

We heard that when PRWeb was on the block in 2006 it was a hot property and had several suitors before Vocus snapped it up. We imagine they saw an opportunity cross-sell solutions to PR people and offer a cost-effective SEO solution at the same time. A $200 press release remains one of the most inexpensive approaches to search engine optimization.

Related: PRWeb Lets You TweetIt

Google celebrated its 11th birthday over the weekend, and to honor the occasion, the folks at The Next Web dug up their first press release. The headline of the release, from June 7, 1999, reads: "Google Receives $25 Million in Equity Funding."

The release included a statement from Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page, "We are delighted to have venture capitalists of this caliber help us build the company...We plan to aggressively grow the company and the technology so we can continue to provide the best search experience on the web." And aggressively grow they did.

TechCrunch wrote another PR link-bait post, and we're happy to take the bait. This time, it's Robin Wauters, who sounds off on "10 Words I Would Love To See Banned From Press Releases." Here is an excerpt from one of the press releases that led to Wauters' post:

Delve Networks, a leading provider of video platforms, announces a strategic relationship with Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering rich media, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, that will enable Delve to offer customers a comprehensive and innovative video publishing solution that includes video management and delivery including support of next generation variable bit rate streaming technologies.

As PRNewser reported back in April, David Meerman Scott has in a sense already done TechCruch's work for them. Scott recently analyzed all 711,123 press releases distributed by the major wire services in 2008 and came up with the top ten most used buzzwords. There are some words that made both lists: leverage and leading are two of them.

[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.

continued...

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?

continued...

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.