We’ve always considered “embargoed” news releases about the least-exciting secrets on the planet.
When most PR departments and agencies decide they’re going to “embargo” a release — meaning that they will submit it to the media in advance, on the condition that they don’t publish or report it until a specific future date — it’s met with a yawn, rather than a gasp, by the media.
Embargoes generally should be used only for substantial stories that require quite a bit of up-front exposition. On the other hand, most substantial stories for public companies are also material — and particularly in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley, we don’t advise distributing material information in advance, even on an embargoed basis. So we use embargoes relatively rarely.
Unfortunately — we suppose because it sounds cool to tell your client you’re going to embargo their release — it’s an overused tactic.
There are still instances where it works like a charm, however. For example, technology PR folk still use the embargo to brief analysts and trade media about new products before a general announcement goes out.
And scientific and medical journals use embargoes brilliantly to drum up publicity for their latest issues. So brilliantly, in fact, that some are crying foul. Writes journalism instructor Vincent Kiernan:
The embargo system … creates a torrent of news that draws excessive public attention to most research… It is time for science and medical journalists to break out of their dependence on journals as a source of science news, and it is time for scholarly societies to stop trying to shape the flow of news in a way that suits their own political ends. The embargo should go.
In a perfect world, where news outlets weren’t so understaffed, Kiernan’s solution might be feasible. As it is, when specific journals continually over-hype their studies, one would hope that they would gradually lose influence among science and medical reporters.
Tags: dallas public relations, embargo, tech public relations, technology pr, technology public relations