The public relations industry wants to make journalists' lives easier, and pumping even more information at reporters is the way to do it. The idea is not brand new, but within the last year the public relations wire services have been experimenting with taking the boring text press release and modernizing it with the help of Internet technologies. Companies are increasingly realizing that providing supplementary materials along with press releases helps reporters better understand the stories the corporations are trying to tell and perhaps can lead to better media play. Companies could pay extra to embed multimedia materials in their Internet-delivered traditional text press releases. On a typical day when the service pumps out between 700 and 800 press releases, BW is lucky to see one company with a video attached to its release, another a digital slide show, and one other with an attached spreadsheet.
Photos are another matter, with a few percent of the releases including photos.
At arch-competitor PR Newswire, vice president of new media and interactive services Bill Adler is more bullish about the concept. PR Newswire has been seeing fewer than 10 videos a month, but Adler is expecting the number to double each month throughout 1999. Photos to accompany press releases have long been strong, but growth is expected in video, audio, corporate slide show presentations, spreadsheets, and live audio and video Web-casts of corporate events. On the day that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved some new heart pump technology, two companies that produce the devices ordered video press releases that explained how the pumps work. PR Newswire also carried a press release that includes a Web video of Madonna's latest music video.