The Secret of VIDEO NEWS RELEASES

Roughly once a month, I have lunch with my friend Ray Young, Vice President of the Roseville, CA Public Relations firm, Halldin and Associates.

In between bites of arugula, pecans, and dried cranberries, Ray will take calls from CNBC or MSNBC or FOX Business, setting up appearances for one of his many financial clients.

“Video”, he said. “Video, is where its at nowadays. Everybody is using video.”

That of course was music to my ears. Video is why we have busted down walls, invested thousands in lighting, tripods, dollies, cameras and teleprompters.

I took Ray’s comments back to the office with me and shared them with Tom Keith, our video expert, and he concurred.

“Absolutely, and I have just the application for it. I call it the Video News Release.”

Well I call it VNR, for short.

VNR, as Tom described it to me, is taking footage of a particular scene or item or event, preparing a possible script along with a telephone number for follow-up.

Now Tom and I have long histories in the News business and we’re both familiar with Press Releases. Most of them are crassly commercial, many are simply uninteresting, and all are somewhat manipulative. So, most News Releases get shredded real fast.

The beauty of VNR can best be told by a short story from the experience of a governmental agency we have been talking with. They prepared a News Release and sent it to all the TV stations in the area. Nobody called and nobody covered the event.

It happened that the News Release lent itself to a particularly good photo shoot. Tom suggested that simply going to the location and getting some video of the area, and sending that to the TV stations would have been more effective. It gives the TV station something graphic (after all, they do deal with pictures), and allows them to tailor the story to fit their own style and needs.

So the next time you have a story to tell and a Press Release to send out, consider a VNR. It may cost you something, but it will be more effective than a piece of paper that will get Eighty-Sixed.