[147] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Sales And PR: The (Dangers of) SunFlash Syndrome
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel P Dern)
Tue Nov 13 10:29:59 1990
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 90 10:14:15 -0500
From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: ddern@world.std.com
As someone who's worn both PR and journalist hats, I'm all in
favor of increased use of e-mail versus paper, but I thought I'd
put a little perspective on the matter.
Billions of Press Releases -- I dunno exactly how many press releases
get issued within our industry, but probably enough to make even the
high-volume net groups and mailing lists look small. Typical estimates
of the paper flow across editorial desks are 2-3,000 press releases PER
MONTH. Any company with a gung-ho PR group can generate 2-12 per month,
particularly if they like to do quarterly earnings, promotions, announcements
of when somebody belches, etc.
If _everybody_ gets on the electronic PR bandwagon, it could add up to
a lot of electronic trees. The odds of "commercial" traffic here are
real high.
Sales Literature: Ditto to PR. Lots of information (quantity of items,
length -- no value judgement on content implied). Particularly if you
start including graphics.
I'm not saying I'm opposed to this. Or in favor of it. But I do want
to point out you can't say, Yes, we want Sun (HP, Digital, etc) info,
but start excluding other vendors arbitrarily (or easily).
No doubt there are pragmatic solutions, like exploding mail lists
"by request only" to sites, and usenet-like hierarchies. Possibly
some semi-automated digest summary.
E-mail, on-line access to sales and marketing information is a great
idea -- but execution is all. (Not to mention the usual concerns over
authenticity, security, and getting top management signoff on this
means of distribution...)
(Can you say CD-ROM? )
Daniel Dern
ddern@world.std.com
617-926-8743
