Press Release
Press Release
What is a press release?
- An article draft reporters can use as written
- Put the reason it’s news in the first two lines of the lead
- Internal announcement before press release
A press release is not a long promotional text of everything the company wants to say. It is a draft written so a reporter can turn it straight into an article. If PR is the whole effort of building relationships with the press, customers, and the community, the press release is just one tool within it. Reporters get dozens a day and skim only the headline and first paragraph. What decides whether it runs is not polished writing but whether the first two lines say why it is news to readers.
The structure is fixed: headline and subheadline, lead, body, quote, company boilerplate, and media contact. The lead is the opening paragraph that packs who, when, where, what, how, and why into one or two sentences; reading it alone should give a reporter a one-line story. The body follows the inverted pyramid, most important first, and quotes carry what only an accountable person can say, such as numbers and plans. Adjectives like “best” and “innovative” are the first thing reporters cut.
Distribution calls for judgment on timing and channel. An embargo is a request to hold coverage until a set time, stated with a date and time at the top of the release. It is not a legally binding promise but a trust-based practice with the press, so use it only when truly needed. Channels fall into three types: sending directly to beat reporters and trade reporters, press release distribution services, and posting to your own newsroom. For B2B companies, three or four industry trade publications reach real customers better than general newspapers.
The gaps show up most at year-end. Personnel, award, and earnings releases pile up and get buried, yet many still end with “our company won an award.” If a release doesn’t say what the news means for the reader, it won’t run. Even riskier is reaching the press before your own employees. If employees first learn of an executive appointment or reorganization from a news story, trust collapses, so schedule the internal announcement ahead of the release time. Listed companies must confirm the order of disclosure for material information with the responsible department.
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum Consulting
Euijung KimBrand strategist with 30 years in advertising, formerly a division head at Daehong CommunicationsIn 1906, American publicist Ivy Lee set out the company’s position right after a Pennsylvania Railroad train accident and gave it to the press, and The New York Times ran it as written. That episode is commonly cited as the first press release. The “first” label is the conventional view; the practice that followed was for companies to lay out the facts and announce them first.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, a private maker of battery inspection equipment, has 310 employees. In the third week of December, it had to announce a new CEO and the launch of an overseas subsidiary together. Of the six press releases it issued last year, only one was picked up as a story.
- A marketing manager who also handles PR opened last year’s releases and found that all six had headlines ending in “Company A wins ○○ award.” A trade-press reporter, when asked, replied, “There was nothing in it for readers.”
- The manager rewrote the lead as “Company A will set up a European subsidiary in the first half of next year to cut local delivery times from 8 weeks to 3.” The CEO appointment moved to the second paragraph.
- The draft quote from the new CEO was “the first year of our global leap.” The manager said, “A reporter would cut that sentence,” and replaced it with 20 local hires and an investment plan.
- The company aligned the sequence with its HR director. At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, the internal announcement went out first. The afternoon before, it sent the release to four trade publications, with the embargo set for 10 a.m. the same day.
- Three of the four trade publications ran the story that day, and one general-interest paper followed. That week, website traffic from Europe was 4x the usual level, and five inquiries came in from local dealers.