PRactical Relations

This week saw South Africa’s first online Social Media Press Release for the 2008 Standard Bank Pro20 cricket series - or at least that’s what the website says. I’m not 100% sure that it’s the first (there are several very smart webPR companies doing great behind-the-scenes work), but it’s certainly the first that I’ve come across. Perhaps it’s because this is the first local media release about a social media release.

I can’t help but wonder though, why did they call it a social media press release? The words “press release” really refer to the traditional way of gaining publicity through the printed press; whereas the words “media release” or “news release” are more inclusive and relevant for broadcast and online media. Perhaps “social media news release” or just simply “social media release” would work. But the terminology is a minor point, overall I feel that this is fantastic work by Standard Bank and all those who worked on this concept, including Cerebra, Brandsh and Melissa Attree.

All the information that a journalist or blogger would need is gathered in one place, from the quick facts at the top, to photos, video clips, quotes, match fixtures and contact details. If you want to see the updates to the release, you simply sign up for the RSS feed and you’ll always be able to access the freshest news around the Pro20.

Congrats to the marketers and the PR team for putting it all together in a simple way. I’m not sure how some of the traditional journalists will perceive this web2.0 thingamajig, but the easy-to-navigate, uncluttered layout will certainly help to convert the newbies. (This particular release was targeted at online journalists, bloggers, podcasters and videocasters.)

With the deadlines that some journalists suffer, they might moan about having to first click a link and wait for the page to load to see if the information is relevant to them or not. In this case, being able to quickly scan through the text in an email is easier. Or perhaps it’s just a habit, which means that it’s simpler to stick with the old ways of doing things? There will always be resistance to change and a social media release like this is certainly a big change from the usual press releases. 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin

I hope to see many more media releases like this one.

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