Over the next few days, the All About Symbian mail-boxes are
going to be assaulted by every software company, every content service, every
peripheral gizmo, and we’re assuming a number of handset manufacturers, are
going to deliver some of the most critical messages of the year. Yes the humble
press release takes on an almost mythic tone, as PR departments and agencies go
head to head in the battle for links, commentary and column inches.
Press Releases have many useful functions - it's one of the clearest ways for companies to present information to the financial markets and there are certain legal reasons why information has to be released in this form. Anything that could affect a company's stock price must be put into the public realm as soon as possible. This is one of the reasons that many phones are promoted long before they arrive in the shops. If you're making a killer phone, at some point you need to tell the world (e.g. to have it licenced by the American regulators). That hits your stock price, ergo that needs to be communicated.
It's just that seeing a phone pre-announced nine months before it's going to be in the stores is a bit of a tease! We're all going to blog and report it, and then it feels like old news when it does arrive.
But that's just one reason for a press release. New services being announced is always a good one. Plenty of scope there to use words carefully and give your competitors a little bit of a quiet kicking. "The first mobile music store with all five major labels involved..." reads wonderfully for your product, and highlights something your competition is missing. Of course the key word is mobile. After all, if you're not the only music store, over all platforms, with the five labels you're going to want to subtly ignore that part of the equation to build yourself up.
Then there's the 'we're not dead yet' press release. A company really wants you to know they're at an event, fighting in a specific market place, and that they're still around. There might not be nothing new to show off, but something is bound to be press release worthy. How about a survey by an 'independent' company that puts them in third place behind Nokia and RIM? Or a competitor in that space has slipped up, or missed a feature you have. That'll do, there's the angle we can use to get noticed,
Try this one:
"Following the impact of the mobile push-email showdown with BlackBerry at 3GSM Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2007, xxxxx continued to drive with its push-communication technology and capped its first year with a number of milestones:"
Yes, it's a wonderful approach here. Two years ago there was this really cool thing (in this case push email) by another company. Our company does it as well, and we started once we saw how big it would be. And you know what? We're getting bigger. We're getting bigger every year. And this year, we're going to be huge! Well, bigger than last year, anyway...
So what are we looking out for? (Or, rather, what are we dreading to read?) Well there are some topics, press releases and strategies which will make us look at each other over the metaphorical (and virtual) editing desk and roll our eyes. Key phrases we’ll be on the look out for include “web 2.0”, “revolutionary”, “monetising user generated content”, “the YouTube generation” and “choose us to increase the ARPU of the average 14 year old”.
Any “guaranteed mobile virus solution” will be handed to Steve without any hesitation, for ritual humiliation. The latest multi-modal gaming solution will be compared to “Space Invaders” by Krisse; “a brand new way to listen to and consume music” will get power chorded to distraction and then utterly shredded by Ewan; and hardware promising “a brand new innovative way to open your SMS messages” will be dispatched by Rafe with a single microswitched keypress.
You want some specifics? Okay then…
Mobile Advertising is bound to crop up during MWC, and a “game changing, revolutionary approach to advertising” is sure to be announced by, oooh, three companies from the show floor in Barcelona. And you know what? I don’t think any of them will make the grade. Normal advertising is tricky in itself, but figure in users paying for the data transferred and the small screen estate, and mobile advertising is an order of magnitude harder. While it’s possible something may emerge that works for all three parties involved (publisher, advertiser and consumer) it’s very unlikely that a small internet startup is going to crack it straight away [hey, AdMob seem to be doing ok! - Ed] – and if a major company has it worked out they’ll probably steer it away from MWC so they can make a bigger noise at their own event (and get more press coverage).
And the same goes for hardware – it’s going to be highly unusual for a game changing device to be presented. We’re expecting an increase in things like memory, camera resolution, speeds, screen size, audio and video quality. Don’t dress up these augmented features as something revolutionary, however. They won’t be. Most people are still shocked and awed when they call up a web browser on a phone!
Practical example time, from "a mobile music company" in the last week (naming no names):
"...we’re particularly proud of the fact that unlike other services, XXXXX gives consumers access to the music they already own as well as to indie bands’ music and Internet radio."
This is a music service that lets you listen to music over a mobile phone data connection. Your own music. Now hold on, there's something almost obvious I'm missing here. You're proud of the fact you can let me listen to my own music? Err... Why? You've pointed out what you think is a great feature, and that frankly I find a bit weird and likely to cost me money (having to move the data from a PC to an online storage space? Having to stream the data from there? Having to really eat up my battery when I could just sideload the MP3 direct to my phone's memory card?). And then you move on to the next bullet point and don't tell me why you think this is a good idea. It just left me hanging with a question of 'huh?'
What do we like to see? Hard numbers – if you’ve got a
product that has technical specifications (typically a phone, but other options
are available) or incurs a cost of some description, we’re going to want to
have those numbers in our report. Please don’t hide them in layers of flash
players on a web site. We might just give up and decide it’s not worth the
bother.
Do have something more than “we’ve got something great coming”. This is especially prevalent in the handset market, where a company announces a phone which is fractionally better than the current crop of handsets, but isn’t going to be available until the middle of Q4. Yes it’s great you’re developing it, but announcing something so early always feels like a negative move. “We don’t want you buying a handset from another manufacturer when you could wait six months and get… this!”
I’m sure everyone out there who writes about the smartphone space has their own pet hates, and probably recognizes everything here (and all the more specific ones we left out). It’s a crazy dance we do; the PR people know it, we know it, yet year in year out they all try to out-do each other. Ah well, at least this year we’ve got one question we've already had a clear answer on. N-Gage is here (or at least with one foot inside the door).
So what are Nokia, and Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Symbian and others going to want us to write about this year? Give it a week and we'll let you know.
-- Ewan Spence
Okay, taking off my sarcastic hat, we do appreciate all the information and press releases we get here at All About Symbian, and we know there's going to be a huge amount of them next week for us to go through. While Steve and I will be in the Editorial Offices, Rafe will be out and about in Barcelona, and if you'd like to meet to do a demo, introduce something to us, or just say hello please do get in touch with him (limited availability left).
And send your Press releases to the usual address, as always!