Sentient Being

Check out http://www.pr-squared.com to learn about a new press release format that has just been launched. It’s totally amazing for its simplicity and its potential. I think that South African PR professionals would need to be use this kind of release in tandem with our traditional 400 word, inverted pyramid ones while we migrate towards the level of Web literacy prevalent in the US.

What this new format shows is that the power in the conversation between companies and their audiences is moving solidly in the direction of the consumer. It is no longer enough for companies to know what they want to tell their ‘chosen’ audience. It is necessary to know what the audience wants to hear from the company – and that means everyone – not just the top 100 listed companies in South Africa or whichever other sufficiently lucrative sector of the market the business has chosen to communicate with.

In the new media or PR 2.0 space everyone is a potential participant in a conversation that includes your brand so best you get listening.

There is no obvious angle in this release. There is just factual information and a few quotes. It’s all true. There is no spin – well – not the kind that can be seen with the naked eye anyway. The art will come in pulling together the right background material, selecting the right kind of photography, coming up with quotes that don’t sound trite or arrogant or totally self-serving and giving the right online sites the first shot at the story.

Sound familiar? Ja, well, its still PR – just all dressed up with her iPod playing in her ears as she IMs on her new WI-FI enabled mobile phone.