PCGCampbell Ford eNews

Press releases have become clutter in the nation’s newsrooms. Their stiff corporate verbiage laced with self-serving product superlatives are no longer must-reads for journalists. In many cases, they’re not even maybe-reads. PCGCampbell and its Ford Motor Company Public Affairs client created a 21st century version of turning corporate messages into “free ink” by combining the immediacy and cost-effectiveness of the Internet and mimicking journalistic style.

Using credible third-party sources as primary spokespeople, eNews would be e-mailed to a pre-determined list of editors, writers, beat reporters and television and radio news directors. The e-newsletter enables the editor of a small-town weekly to pick up quotes from a blue-chip company CEO that he or she would normally not have access to.

The idea was to create the “Ford eNews,” a newsletter written in journalistic style. The publication is published on media.ford.com and “blasted” to editors and writers around the world.

With a single click, journalists are immediately struck by headlines that mimic newsroom style without the usual marketing superlatives. Copy gets right to the point in the lead paragraph and continues in inverted pyramid style (biggest facts first).

Journalists quickly recognize that Ford’s eNews has information they can use to fill a news hole, to supplement an existing story they’re working on or to spark an original story. Ford e-News began as a bi-weekly and is quickly becoming a compelling tool for Ford to promote its products and corporate points-of-view on industry issues and trends.

The cost to send this paperless communication electronically to 9,000 journalists is $500. Just the postage on that many press releases at 37-cents per would be $3,330.

Evidence of how journalists are using e-News shows they’re using the material as verbatim filler on print pages, websites or on the air, or they’re incorporating the idea and some of the copy into a story they are already writing and producing on the subject.

Ford decided to increase the frequency from bi-weekly to weekly after just five months, and the Ford Division public affairs group is using many of eNews stories for other uses such as press kits and content for its media website.