Press releases are so yesterday

A journalist in Mumbai receives maybe twenty emails everyday from PR companies and almost all of them claim that their client has done something revolutionary. A signature something that will propel something else into excellence and is path-breaking. Who cares? Most journalists will ignore the email, Some others who're picky about how clean their inbox looks, will delete the email. But nobody will call the PR up, unless of course, they're absolutely devoid of stories and just need to get out of office.

Millennials want honesty and so do their publications. Customers have already made that clear. The thinking population doesn't believe the fairness cream ads, or the 'chamakte hue kapde' ads anymore. And that's why smart companies have changed them. A well known detergent brand recently launched a campaign that said "Laundry is not a woman's job". Now that made sense to millennials. The ad got kudos from people country-wide and of course lots of hits and shares. The ad didn't say a word about the detergent's cleaning abilities or its price. Why? Because nobody believes all that baloney anyway.

But public relations somehow hasn't understood any of that. Companies and PR agencies both think that media is going to exalt their brand just because they said so in their press release. And no matter ho blunt one is one the phone, they persist. Phone calls, invitations to press conferences, lunches and what not. Praise our great enterprise and our top management. What these companies need to understand is that their communication would be a lot more effective if it were honest. If their release had more information and less adjectives.