Eight Years After Opening, Two-Word Press Release is the First Issued by New Jersey PR Firm
17 June 2006
Axiom Communications took its time issuing its first press release -- the firm is 8 years old and has developed hundreds for its clients -- and it kept its message brief: two words.
"Hoffa Found," blasted the headline-only release, which was intended to drive traffic to the firm's new website, http://www.axiominc.net , an animation with no navigation in which the former Teamster's boss makes a brief symbolic appearance.
"We got lucky with the Hoffa thing -- our website was in development long before they started digging up the state of Michigan looking for him," says Mr. Simoncini. "But if there is one lesson in all of this, it's that you have to format media messages in the context of contemporary concerns, and so when we saw our opportunity we pushed out our message even though our site is not complete."
Offering no navigation, the site simply plays the animation, which Simoncini says is not an apparent shortcoming. "We intended to have modest navigation, because the film tells our entire story through a medium that also gives our clients a glimpse into our creativity. Of the hundreds of contacts we sent it to, only one suggested that we have more information about Axiom on the site."
"Most communications firms have websites that are antithetical to the message that we as an industry should be sending our clients. They typically are staid formats that provide service menus, client lists and samples of client work -- they all look the same because they are geared to contend that every visitor is a prospective client. As PR practitioners, we all tell our clients how important it is to form a unique image with a unique selling proposition, and then we don't do it ourselves."
"We espouse that the work we do is created for a specific audience for a specific purpose. So presenting client work as a new business development exercise on our website is an insult to the existing client and, on a practical level, it poses an uncomfortable conundrum for the prospective client: 'is the work the firm will do for me for me, or is it for their website?'"
"The worst possible answer is also the truth: 'Both.' Everyone who develops a campaign that they expect to feature on their website is making service compromises that the client should reject out of hand. If PR firms had the guts to truly define who they are and who their prospective clients are, using the same methodology we advocate to our clients, gallery-style websites would cease to exist."
On the matter of the firm's claim that it issued the shortest press release ever, Simoncini is not looking to hold the record for long, nor is he likely to be a serial self-promoter.
"As far as I can tell this is the current record for economy of language, which will soon be broken by firms who want the record for themselves and send out one-word releases," says Mr. Simoncini. "But at least we'll be able to say 'hey, when we held the record, it was ours and ours alone.' And it will be interesting to see what single words follow our pair."
"When we sat down internally to figure out what we were going to do about promoting our firm, which we need to do to gain a new scale that helps our clients and our people achieve their commercial goals, we left the meeting with a set of three press releases we had to get out," Simoncini said. "I admit to being a reluctant collaborator in this mission of self-promotion, but I am taking comfort in the fact that I only acceded under the condition that they would not ask me to run advertisement in trade papers in order to get them picked up."
Source: prnewswire
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