The _____ Amazing News Release Ever

I’ll let you decide how to fill in that blank. I was looking to add another press release to my PRoToolKit I made last semester, so I Googled ‘best news release’ to see what came up, and if any of my already written news releases met the criteria (they don’t).

Anyways, I stumbled across a Dean Rodgers article where he’s talking about the most amazing news release ever written. You can read his outlook on it over at KoiFish if you’d like. To make a long story short, it got me wondering if gimmicks really work in the media. As far as public relations goes, I always look at it as a very professional field, and I was surprised that this “press release” got any coverage at all.

Gimmicks are fun, don’t get me wrong – but do they work? Well, I guess to an extent they have to, because I’d never heard of Pitch Point Public before this, but now I know that it is a PR firm launched in 2007 and that it was founded by Mitch Delaplane, who has helped clients like Lexus, McDonald’s and BP (they probably could have used you this past year, Mitch!).

Another gimmick comes to mind. There was a man named Orson Welles, you might have heard of him. You know, the man who broadcasted War of the Worlds over the radio wreaking havoc on some American citizens’ psyche. Yeah, that guy. He’s immensely famous, so I guess they do work – if you do it right.

But companies don’t always do it right.

Take McDonald’s “The Lost Ring” campaign it tried out before the Beijing Olympics. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are becoming more popular, and I think they’re a very hip and cool alternative to normal advertising, but when I heard about “The Lost Ring” I didn’t know who to thank for it. I didn’t hear until after the Olympics had started that it was done by McDonald’s in conjunction with the Olympics. It took too long for the results to come out, and ultimately failed to garner as much attention as it should have.

That being said, it did put one more idea in my head in case I ever take that marketing/advertising job over one in PR. For me personally, different forms of advertising are eye-catching.

I’ve started drinking Miller High Life occasionally since their 1-second Super Bowl advertisement, where before I never touched the stuff. I just see gimmicks as a creative way to advertise, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

But at the end of the day, a gimmick is only such until people realize what it truly is, and then it ceases to become a gimmick and becomes everyday advertising, which makes them hard to sustain – but I guess that’s why I find them so interesting.