There is a conference taking place. I know there is, although I might not necessarily know who where or why – although the why is usually a conference organiser spying a chance to charge a lot for tickets to an event that doesn’t cost a lot to organise.
How do I know there is a conference taking place? Because I see a surge in press releases from a range of organisations all making announcements about the same area of research or products all at the same time.
I have a lot of RSS feeds for work and pleasure, and it is always obvious when there is a medical or science conference taking place, as lots of researchers all make discoveries at exactly the same time in the same area of research.
In essence, and for reasons which always confuse me, the PR industry thinks that it needs to save up its announcements and collectively spit them out all at the same time – leading to a deluge of press releases hitting the email box all at once.
Within the telecoms industry, there is a huge conference starting next week – and there will be the annual flood of announcements from firms, big and small. And then followed by messages a week later from anxious Press Officers representing small firms wanting to know why their terrifically important announcement didn’t get any media coverage.
Because it was swamped by the big announcements from big firms of course!
It seems that few PR firms have worked out that a steady drip-feed of announcements across the year would get them more long term coverage for their client than saving everything for an annual blitz.
I know there is a conference happening – because the PR world is a strange one.
Ha. I’m one of the telecoms journalists now drowning under the flood of announcements of trivial product releases and invitations to attend ‘catch up’ meetings at Mobile World Congress next week. I calculated last year that I had received 300 or so and that I accepted around 5% of them; indeed, last year I received about 50% of the invitations within the final week.