BarCampLondon2 and the misguided Press Release

I’ve been following the arguments surrounding Stowe Boyd’s posts about the death (or not) of the Press Release. There’s a whole bunch of stuff, links and commentary in those few posts that are well worth taking the time to read and consider.

And with all that debate and discussion, here’s an example of how things are changing – and why they are not nearly there yet (of course, I’m not sure where ‘there’ is yet, but it’s not here.

BarCampLondon2 has been organised and the first batch of a 100 or so tickets ’sold out’ within 90 minutes. There’s more coming, but they are on a staged release. They are being hosted by BT who have decided that they should get a little PR out of this fact. Nothing wrong with that. So the organising team went and approved a Press Release, thinking it would go out to the the more mainstream organisations.

But in this case, Octane, BT’s PRs company, had obviously heard of the ’social media press release’, of reaching out and talking to bloggers so decided to go out and do just that. Go and find relevant bloggers who may be interested in coming along to the camp, write them a personal note, send them the press release, get the word out there. It’s not as though they have any other way of getting the news…right?

Up to this point, all was well. The mindset was correct, they were planning on doing ‘the right thing’. And then the wheels come off the bus. Identifying bloggers should be easy..you just plug in some search terms to the right tools, produce a list of blogs who have talked about Barcamp or similar topics, find out there name and send them an email. But it takes far more than that; personalised outreach like this takes a little more understanding.

Hence the emails to 2 of my friends – Ben and Ian. On the surface, they are prime candidates for such a move. They’ve been to previous events, they have all the right credentials. Unfortunately, the review of whether they were appropriate appeared to be only paper-thin. Ben and Ian were the organising force behind the first BarCampLondon; Ben has since moved to SanFran so may not be popping back for the weekend. Ian’s situation is even funnier (in a sad way) in that he’s approved the press release the PR firm had sent him.

So what did they do rigfht and wrong?

• YES: reaching out and contacting bloggers, message boards and the like who may be interested in the product/service/event you may be selling is a good thing. They have different audiences to mainstream media and may be able to reach a better target than the press. Doing a number of these things and building a relationship over time as a long term strategy is a good idea.
• NO: Using this tactic to promote a BarCamp, by its very nature a grassroots movement that has never needed traditional PR to fill up its events does not work. It’s an event publicised by bloggers; their news system is far more effective than a PR company to spread the word.
• YES: sending out personalised messages that give the impression that you have looked at their blog. The emails sent were slightly different, not cut and paste, so there was thought behind it.
• NO: Doing what appears to be a cursory look only and not learning about the person you are contacting. As you would do in the more traditional PR arena, developing relationships and knowing who you are pitching to is essential. Good traditional PR people are part of the PR community; to move into the online area, you need to be part of those communities as well.

So what next? Ian is trying to get examples of the emails sent out and is planning to discuss with BT and the PR company. Hopefully, this is taken as a learning experience and the next time they do this we’ll see things done differently. Meanwhile, next time I end up doing something like this, feel free to point me at my own post.