Our clients generally have very busy PR and marketing schedules.
To get everything in, we try not to let external events dictate the pace.
There are some obvious exceptions; you don’t want to announce news on a major holiday, or shortly before or after one.
If there is a major industry event, such as a trade show, and you or your client are not there, why compete with the noise of other announcements?
Then, there are the planned and unplanned events and news outside of tech that can steal the thunder from your announcement; You need to use good common sense and look at each situation, in general we are an aggressive shop and don’t like to stand down if we don’t have to (see my post Hypocrisy Rampant in “When not to Pitch a Story”).
To use a real example, if you follow the world of tech or use an iPhone, you by now probably know that next week – September 12, to be exact – is when Apple is expected to announce iPhone 5 details.
The New YorkTimes covered how other vendors of consumer tech have adjusted their PR schedules in light of Apple, which does tend to suck the air out of all other coverage (see Rivals Jostle for Spotlight… and excerpts below).
Back when Apple
was an underdog, it had an easier time shrouding its product
announcements in mystery and perhaps catching its competitors off guard. But now technology companies are watching every one of Apple’s moves — and scrambling to get out in front of them.
Several major tech companies are cramming product announcements into this holiday-shortened workweek…
In past years it was common for technology companies to deliver product news at trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas. Now some major companies have scaled back their presence
at those conventions and followed Apple’s lead in running their own
elaborate news conferences, hoping to grab the news media’s undivided
attention.
Fall product introductions are important to companies seeking to
generate excitement ahead of the holiday shopping season. The fall has
become especially jam-packed with news in recent years as both the
number of companies involved and their product lines have grown, with
the addition of players like Amazon and its Kindle products as well as
all the companies building mobile devices based on Google’s Android operating system.
