#PRCAtech – the narrative beats the statement

Last night, I helped arrange one of our regular PRCA Technology Group events on the future of tech journalism. This year’s theme was “Show me the money”, drawing out perspectives about how journalism will continue to sustain itself, where the line is with opportunities like native advertising and how PRs can help.

Inevitably, the conversation eventually hit the PR side of practice and a line from Charles Arthur struck me as too good not to share.

When asked about press releases, his big point was:

A press release is a statement, not a narrative.

On the surface, quite simple. But this gets to the core of something we’ve been working on with clients at Augur since we started.

You have to tell your story on an ongoing basis, independently of your obsession with others noticing it. If you want to build authority, you have to genuinely get out there and author it.

If you consistently publish about what your company is doing, seeing and how your market is changing, the opportunities to amplify that exist in parallel to an already worthy activity.

Your attention is on crafting a narrative across many consistent statements instead of obsessing about any one person writing about any one message in a vacuum.

This is not only strategically sensible in creating fewer ‘single points of failure’, it’s more measurable, gives your more data points to learn from, lends itself to an iterative approach and turns the viewer into an interested, independent audience instead of a target to be milked for influence.

Sketch out the cadence of your months to come and be realistic about what the overall picture looks like. Is it three unconvincing press releases or it an ongoing record of your thoughts, experience and insight, some of which are highlights worth sharing with specific people?

It’s time to get real.