On March 6, 2009, PR Newswire Asia successfully held a media coffee in Shenzhen. The event focused on discussions surrounding how enterprises communicated with the media, the public and investors through the efficient dissemination of information. There were four senior journalists from well-known domestic media and some 60 market observers and PR professionals from the business community in attendance.  They conducted profound exchanges and discussions about what adjustments the media had made to their editing outlines, how enterprises should avoid negative news, and what issues enterprises needed to pay attention to when deciding what distribution methods best suited their needs.

Attending media professionals that were invited to deliver speeches at the meeting included Li Kun, a journalist from the Securities Times who is responsible for corporate and industrial economic news reports; HE Xiongfei, a journalist responsible for editing the New Weekly magazine; Ding Kan, a journalist from the Shenzhen office of Nanfang Daily who focuses on corporate and commercial reports; and Guan Jian, chief journalist from the Shenzhen Business News who mainly reports on commercial and market news.

        HE Xiongfei, New Daily’s journalist explained the key points of corporate news distribution during the recession.  

The four media professionals gave some valuable suggestions on the keynote theme of how corporate information should be distributed in the economic crisis,

In terms of news writing, Securities Times’ journalist LI Kun believed in the following concepts: firstly, news releases should be dramatic or full of conflicts, which was the most attractive point to journalists. Therefore, when providing news to the media, you should highlight the news point. Secondly, news releases should be novel. Because people were always interested in fresh stories that they have never heard about, which was actually the psychological state of all people. But the new releases provided by many enterprises were monotonous and had no novelty. Due to lack of some novel and useful information, they would be unattractive to the media. Hence, new things were needed in them. Thirdly, relevance is also important. Readers only paid attention to what they were interested in or those associated with their benefits. And the relevance included the relation between rivals, the relation between the upstream and downstream supplier, etc.       

Meanwhile, the journalist thought that corporate new releases should avoid some specific problems. Firstly, excessive focus and stress on themselves would give the readers the feeling of “every cook praising his own broth”. Secondly, there were too much information that was unattractive to readers, e.g. excessive detailed introduction of their own activities. Thirdly, lack of introduction of information really attractive to readers. Fourthly, the company should provide its most eye-catching information unless it was a highly influential star company.

He Xiongfei, a journalist from New Weekly, opined that enterprises should focus on two important factors when they distribute news during the recession. First the growth in contrast to the trend of the environment should be highlighted. During the macro-economic recession, there might be some opportunities for some enterprises to develop, so advocacy is of great importance at such time. Some enterprises, especially those in industries such as entertainment, film and training, should make use of this growth opportunity to distribute news and build brand images. Enterprises in other industries should also have their own highlight to attract media and public according to their own and the industrial features.

Ding Kan, a journalist from Nanfang Daily said that PR Newswire is one of the sources of their news.

Media guests and enterprise representatives communicated with each other during the interval of the conference.

As regards the communication between enterprises and media, Ding Kan, from Nanfang daily, held that each media had a different position and dedicated journalist responsible for different industries. It is crucial for enterprises to communicate effectively with media journalists who are appointed to report their industry.

As regards the news release provided by PR companies or enterprises, Guan Jian, a journalist from Shenzhen Business News stressed the following issues: First, the industrial terminologies or jargons should be simplified to make sure it is readable to the public; Second, when writing news releases, PR companies or enterprises should divide them into several useful levels to include information relevant to the news fact, avoid redundant description about themselves and provide some opinions on their industry; Third, the news releases usually look stereotyped. The enterprises should make their news releases special and attractive to readers and the media with highlighted news points, so that they can be selected by the media from numerous news releases; Fourth, the news releases should not focus on advocacy of themselves with advertising languages, and the PR professionals should equip themselves with news quality to incorporate self-advocacy naturally in the news releases, which will have a better distribution effect.

Moreover, the media guests also mentioned the media communication of small and medium-sized enterprises. Because of their limited brand influence and PR funding, they should make better use of media distribution. Especially during the economic crisis, they should strengthen news advocacy. If they highlight more the news point in their releases and use professional distribution services and channels such as the newswire for a wide communication, it will be both efficient and effective.

Source:  PR Newswire Asia