Having listened intently to the ensuing debate since yesterday morning, it seems to me that there is a real desire to have this discussion and some fantastic points, suggestions and comments are being made. However in constructing the campaign we appear to have put up a barrier for some in the form of some of the language used.
Where the Bill of Rights was concerned the word “demanded” was used in conjunction with the word “believe” as we had based the initial list of so called “rights” on public posts written over the years by journalists and bloggers and by feedback from the research. However this did not mean that we “know” that these are demanded by *all*. That is one of the things this campaign and the resulting debate is aiming to establish.
Secondly the title the “Bill of Rights” seems to have got some peoples’ backs up. Leaving aside whether we would be having such a fascinating conversation if softer language had been used we do not want this to be, as Will Sturgeon says in his comment on PRWeek, just a publicity stunt and this week’s bandwagon. So if people will help us we are offering to tear it up and start again. What should this be called? What should be in it? Should it represent both sides of this debate? Alternatively forget about this campaign and someone else take up the standard – CIPR, PRCA? What matters most is surely that having got this discussion started we don’t miss this opportunity.
30/1/10 Update we have added answers to many of the frequently asked questions and comments that people have raised in connection with the animation here, and the bill of rights here.
[blog] An Opportunity Not to Be Wasted http://bit.ly/bO36pj by @AdParker
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
As you well know, I’ve written about this subject for years. I’m agree with the sentiment of the campaign. However, it may be the whole issue will be solved by other means.
As Mark Brownlow at EMail Marketing Reports says: “For the last few weeks and months, various people close to the process of managing and filtering incoming emails have been warning that “legitimate” senders and sources of bulk email are likely to face more rigorous control.
A related development is the intended (and to some extent implemented) move to relying more on how recipients interact with your emails to decide if those emails are worthy of delivery.”
In other words, the ISPs will be looking at how the recipients of your press release emails respond. And if they find that open rates are low they may just not deliver them in the first place.
Perhaps this might finally spur the PR sector to sort itself out – otherwise, somebody else will do it for them.
Blogged on this yesterday http://bit.ly/dfiS1h
Interesting gamble from RealWire given it, er, distributes press releases… but to be fair I use RW’s services from time to time and they always call up to recommend target groups so this IS something they take seriously. I’ll be using it again, too.
RW’s campaign achieved what it wanted to – widespread debate – and Parker was excellent at responding quickly to all the buzz about it so an example of a brave and well-executed campaign in my view.
This comment was originally posted on Wadds’ PR Blog
I definitely think it should represent both sides of the debate. I really think that if journalists agreed to update their Cision (or other media list building tools) accounts with more information or make it more clear who to send certain articles to on the company website, it would get rid of a lot of the spam. I can’t tell you how annoying it is to try building a media list and I get to a really great magazine and they only have one editor’s email address listed. I feel bad sending pitches only to them, but if that’s the only address listed, what else can I do?
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by wadds: [my blog] Inconvenient PR Truth campaign @InconvenientPR is plainly inconvenient http://bit.ly/92HvEo…;
This comment was originally posted on Wadds’ PR Blog
Classic piece of PR research. Badly done with some really outrageous generalisations.
You have results from very small unrepresentative samples of “recipients of press release emails including primarily journalists, but also bloggers, editors and publishers” andthen take the results from those samples and generalise to “UK and US Journalists” .
I agree that the problem is very real, but those numbers do not really add anything to a debate that’s been going on for decades.