Edelman 'New Media Release' is a PR exercise

PR spin, especially from 'Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm' (would it, could it be anything else - the marketing boiler plate from the marketing boiler just has to be added), has announced that it has a new template for press/social media story announcements - A sort of replacement for the old fashioned press release. Fantastic!

The concept of a social media news release, says Edelman, 'has been a key topic of discussion within the public relations profession during the past several months'.

Of course, had Edelman been awake, they would known that this has been a key topic of conversation for half a decade and that there is already a 'social media release' and it has been available for four years from Yellowhawk.


This would have saved Edelman’s me2revolution team (part of the world’s largest independent public relations firm) development of the StoryCrafter software (to help accelerate the industry’s adoption of the social media news release) years (okay - minutes) of revolutionary fervour.

One, of course cannot get a close look behind this revolution. In an open source aid to adoption of social media the command and control me2revolution (the technical brains behind the world’s largest independent public relations firm) did not acquire the ethos that goes with being a revolutionary (ahh for the good old days - where are the anarchists?).

Probably more important is that this has all the trappings of an underfunded, me-too, 'Public Relations Exercise' into the fashionable world of 'my new media is bigger than your new media releases' or Todd Defran 1.0. with (the world’s largest independent public relations firm) Edelman spin.

Here are some things one might expect in a NMR:

The Todd Defran layout
Content in format that can be re-purposed for print, web, blog, podcast, vcast, sms alert, mobile web, iTV. With full content for editorial mashup (including two-shots etc), deep briefing by way of searchable, editable wiki content.
It has to be XPRL compliant, NewsML compliant and must be able to have NITF tags the IPTC words need to be identified for the news agencies and for the business community there has to be an XBRL schema interface.

For authentication there is a need to have automated (duel key?) security and these days it is simple to include trace, tracking, monitoring and evaluation components.

Plug-ins might also include auto notifications to:
Backflip BlinkBits Blinklist blogmarks
Buddymarks CiteUlike del.icio.us digg
Diigo dzone FeedMarker Feed Me Links!
Furl Give a Link Gravee Hyperlinkomatic
igooi kinja Lilisto Linkagogo
Linkroll looklater Magnolia maple
Netscape netvouz Newsvine Raw Sugar
RecommendzIt.com reddit Rojo Scuttle
Segnalo Shadows Simpy Spurl
Squidoo tagtooga Tailrank Technorati
unalog Wink wists Yahoo My Web

I did not see the button to 'blog this release' , I did not see the 'vlog this' button or the podcasting buttons. There does not seem to be an 'email to a friend' capability or 'turn this into a PDF' for (the the dead tree paper) freaks in your office button.

I just have a feeling that this is another 'fire from the hip and to hell with the consequences' PR approach to an important issue.

Edeman (the world’s largest independent public relations firm) wanted to be seen to be the web 2.0 leader. Its WalMart problems show a lack of training in-house. Its pitching policies to bloggers show an even bigger training gap and now it is showing that it has only a shaky grasp of new media and its opportunities.

As far as I can see, this announcement is nothing more than a digital version of a 1970's backgrounder press brief with tags instead of tabs. Big Deal!