Studies show that "Uninteresting" press releases and "annoying" telephone calls are the things that most irritate journalists about cooperation with PR communication experts in businesses and agencies. Nevertheless positive: 82% of surveyed journalists describe their experience with PR pros as at least very good, whereas only 16% issued a generally negative judgment. What's more, 60% of the journalists deemed the work of the communication experts as helpful in performing their daily tasks. Only 20% were categorically of a different opinion.

These are the central results of a study conducted by Politis Communication, a US agency specialized in the IT industry. A total of 1750 journalists from the world of technology were contacted within the scope of this research; 180 returned completed questionnaires.

"Don't waste our time" is the clear message from journalists to PR experts," David Politis, President of Politis Communications, summarizes the critical aspects of the study. 80% of the surveyed journalists specified uninteresting stories in press releases as a main nuisance. "Some companies", notes one journalist, "send me a press release almost every week, usually with trivial content. If it happens often enough, I treat the sender like 'spam' and delete the message immediately, without reading it. Similarly annoying in the eyes of journalists are constant phone calls: 74% consider telephone "follow-ups" nerve-wracking. "We get hundreds of these calls every week", states another journalist, "but we simply do not have the time to chat with these people about if and when we will use their news."

Besides these two points, especially lacking knowledge of the contacted medium (63%) and lacking knowledge of journalistic work methods (54%) are met with intolerance. E-mail attachments met with the disapproval of 45% of the journalists.

"It's a positive signal", David Politis concludes decisively, "that many journalists describe their experiences with PR experts as positive and in principle value the work." On the other hand, Politis continues, the communication pros need to make more effort "to understand the journalists and media that we are contacting. If we can surmount these hurdles, the chance of developing a good, trusting relationship with the media is inordinately greater."

PR more effective than traditional advertising

25/05/2010 - PR is more effective than traditional advertising when potential buyers concentrate much of their attention on the product, as is the case with cars and cosmetics.
This is the finding of a comparative study conducted by the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz in conjunction with a Hamburg-based marketing consultancy, reports the website business-wissen.de. The study evaluated, among other things, more than 50 international surveys.

PR key for relaying information
According to the study, PR is particularly effective when it comes to credibility, reasoning and imparting knowledge. PR persuades undecided customers to make concrete purchases, of cars or electronic devices, for example.
The strengths of traditional advertising, on the other hand, mainly lie in advertising those products to which consumers pay less attention.
Ads are not, however, about to become a thing of the past, because, unlike PR, advertising can be fully controlled; it is though around eight to ten times more expensive than PR.

Trend towards a new communication mix
For companies, efficiency is vital when it comes to advertising and PR. That's why the authors of the study anticipate a significant change in the communication mix in the future.

This trend is expected to be accelerated by the internet, which works more in line with the interaction principals of PR than in accordance with the attention rules of advertising.

It is considered difficult to transfer traditional advertising formats to the internet. The study therefore showed that although the internet was the number 1 information medium among those surveyed, it is also the medium with the highest number of advertising rejecters and avoiders. (uqrl)

PR overtakes classic advertising

Public Relations is more important than classic advertising for medium-sized companies - claims a new study from the Department of Marketing at the University of Würzburg. On a scale of 1 (completely unimportant/implausible) to 6 (completely important/plausible), PR achieved 5.31 points in the area of importance and 4.69 as regards plausibility. Sales promotion measures came in second place (4.50 and 4.55 points), followed by direct communication (4.32 and 3.66 points). Classic advertising only managed fourth place, with values of 4.28 and 3.68 points. The worst scores were recorded by sponsorship (3.18 points for importance, 3.42 for plausibility).
According to the study, medium-sized companies change their priorities slightly when it comes to the actual use of the various marketing tools. On a scale of 1 (never) to 6 (more than twice a month), PR is ahead in this category too (4.64), closely followed by sales promotion measures (3.73) and classic advertising (3.71). Medium-sized companies use event marketing least of all (2.25), according to the study; this corresponds to a frequency of just two to three times a year. Trade fairs and exhibitions were in the middle range in all categories.
The Business Management Studies and Marketing Institute at the University of Würzburg asked more than 100 companies employing up to 1,000 people how they rated traditional marketing tools in terms of plausibility, importance and frequency of use.
(Source: w&v, March 2008)

People trust the media, not politics or blogs

Blogs have completely changed the media landscape. The media enjoy greater trust than governments, especially in the developing countries. In this connection, national TV pro-
grammes come ahead of other sources of news. Weblogs come last in the rankings list which was commissioned by the BBC, Reuters and the Media Center and presented at the WeMedia Global Forum in London. Media usage in Germany was out of line when viewed internationally. On average, for all countries, 61% of users trust the media, whilst 52% trust their respective governments. Only in two countries was the ratio the opposite way round: in the UK, 51% trust the government whilst only 47% trust the media, and in the USA, the ratio is actually 67 to 59%.

Users were also asked what their most important source of news is. Germany is the only
country in which more respondents gave the newspapers as a more important source than television (45 to 30 percent). In the USA, in contrast, television, at 51%, is way ahead of daily papers (21%). In Russia, the results were even less favourable for newspapers (9 to 74 percent).

As far as confidence in the various forms of media is concerned, the figures for publicly owned radio stations, national television programmes and newspapers (national and supraregional) in Germany were very close (83/81/80 percent). Blogs followed a long way behind, with 38%,
but were still well ahead of "friends and family", which only 25% of respondents gave as trust-worthy sources of news. However, 81% of Russians surveyed see it quite differently, and gave friends and family as trustworthy sources of news.

When it comes to confidence in specific sources, in Germany, the publicly owned broadcasters in particular can be happy with the results of the survey. 22% spontaneously named ARD as "the most trustworthy source" of news, followed a long way back by ZDF (7%), n-tv/N24 (6%), RTL (4%), Süddeutsche Zeitung (3%) and Spiegel (2%).

However, Germany is the only country in which a majority of those surveyed (51%) were not
of the view that the media report sufficiently on subjects that interest readers, listeners and viewers. In addition, 54% felt that the media did not allow the parties who play a role in a particular matter to speak. However, at the same time 58% of respondents thought that the media reported correctly. (Original report in golem.de)


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