Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Recently I did a riff on the problem with “vision” and all the boring blah-blah that gets produced. (Marketing Without Blinders)

Then I run across this IBM press release about “vision”

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its vision for community driven development and introduced new software to help clients drive greater visibility, business intelligence and collaboration in software delivery projects. The roadmap, unveiled at the IBM Rational Software Development Conference in Orlando, Florida, centers around IBM’s software development portfolio which helps geographically and/or organizationally distributed development teams collaborate in real time.

Trust me, it doesn’t get any better from there. There are some interesting nuggets buried in it - but that’s just it - they’re buried. And, we never did get to “the vision.” I’d bet my next month’s receivables that exactly three people actually read this thing to the end: the person who wrote it, the IBM attorney, and (maybe) the person who approved it. Oh, wait a sec, I’m #4.

The only reason such gets any notice is that IBM is - well - IBM. There’s also a lot of activity behind the scenes, with their PR people talking to and up the media and analysts. If you’re not IBM, then why would you write a similar blah-blah press release? Sure, you can distribute over the various wires… and post on your web site and send to 500 of your closest friends…but will anybody read it - much less care?

Note: “Getting it on the wire” (example: PR Newswire) is not the same as getting published, much less read and remembered.

Full Disclosure: I’ve written my fair share of boring press releases. Let’s face it, there are few ways to - for instance - jazz up an organizational announcement and: A. Not totally weird out the reader; B. Still get client approval (We can talk marketing arson all we want to, but reality is reality, folks.) Plus print (and even Web) media only has so much space for such things and unless you’re talking about a really big kahuna, it’s just another headshot to fit in there somewhere. However, I do try to jazz up the standard “about” boilerplate that comes at the end of every release…and avoid words like, “innovative,” “solution” and - um - “vision.”

Related Post: They Don’t Care What Your CEO Says.

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Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, public relations, press release, IBM