By Danny Sullivan
As a PR practitioner, once in a while something happens to make you scratch your head and revisit the question we all wonder from time to time: what qualifies as newsworthy on any given day?
Of course, there are certain things we know about this question (known knowns, if you will). For example, that size matters – the big news always gets covered first, and that it’s a known fact that survey results invariably make for good content on a slow news day.
But sometimes the rulebook goes out the window. A recent announcement by a client was deemed by all to be a fairly routine affair – certainly a story that was worth distributing, but not one that would generate significant media attention. Or so we thought.
Cue two days of frantic media activity, spawning all kinds of broadcast and print media coverage. No complaints here – delighted to get the response, but did we miss something on this one? Clearly we did, although, looking back, I stand firmly by our original conviction that the story was a relatively minor one!
In retrospect, the response was unexpected, but primarily driven by the media’s willingness to revisit a good story that, while already having played out in the press extensively, has the kind of enduring appeal that means it only takes a fairly minor event to push it back into the limelight.
It’s great when it happens, but confounding nonetheless.
/// COMMENTS
2 Comments »Kelli
November 07, 2008 9:06 pmI’m hoping you can share the piece of news that you shared that unexpectedly caused a so much of a frenzy.
Francis
November 10, 2008 9:41 amKelli: I think Danny’s reticence to share the story stems from our tendency not to pump our clients on our blog. But since you asked, the announcement was that the i-LIMB Hand, the world’s most advanced prosthetic hand, had been named to TIME magazine’s list of top 50 inventions of the year, coming in at number 14. (You can see the original TIME story here: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1852747_1854195_1854132,00.html and the BBC’s treatment of our release here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7712976.stm)
Notwithstanding that this was a major accomplishment for Scotland’s Touch Bionics which makes the hand, we had quite limited expectations for media pick-up of our release. In our experience, most media tend to pay scant attention to awards programs and lists put out by their competitors.
Our expectations were spot on in North America; most everyone ignored the release when we issued it Wednesday. When it hit the wires the other side of the pond Thursday morning, however, Danny’s phone started ringing off the hook. Whether it was the cachet of the global TIME brand or the fact that U.K. companies are seldom recognised in this way, the upshot was that everyone wanted a piece of the story. As Danny wrote, we’re still not entirely sure why this happened but we’re always happy to see it.