When I started many years ago, before the days of the internet, one of the disciplines brought about by the limited space of printed media was that a press release had to be something of value to readers , otherwise it didn’t get published – and this is something we have tried to maintain. Likewise editors complained if they got too much that was not relevant to them – which meant that mailing lists were kept relevant. We operated for many years with very focused and very limited lists of titles for our clients. The internet changed that to a fair degree – but we still try to maintain the same discipline in the belief that if we do the right thing in the right way then it will be of value and so bring results for our clients.
Back in the 70’s when I became interested in Marketing there was a similar problem, since almost everybody had the idea that marketing was about the way global corporates sold soap and soft drinks – it was not that relevant to B2B but it is distressing how many SME MDs still think it is what marketing is all about and dismiss it accordingly. Industrial PR has suffered in the same way from the froth and bubble activities of the tabloid/internet press – sadly even many of the present day commentators are still confused by this and seem unable to clearly differentiate between the marketing of a valve and of a chocolate bar. We believe it is important to remember that our basic purpose as a Marketing/PR agency is to communicate useful information to engineers who need it through relevant publications.
From what I hear some agencies still broadcast puff pieces to hundreds of titles – and the trade distribution services appear to encourage this – which is why we put a lot of work into our mailing lists and are still quite focused in our PR distribution – and why we renamed ourselves The Industrial Marketing Agency – because that is what we do.
Probably a bit of a nostalgic rant but I guess the point is that whatever we put out for clients should have intrinsic value to our target audience and if we do that well then we will achieve our clients objective.
