I’m helping a friend with the launch of a rather original tech product. Our strategy is to reach out to a reporter that we have an existing relationship with from TechCrunch (considered the most important tech publication) and offer them an embargoed exclusive. But we would ultimately want many other publications to cover the story too, after TechCrunch has published their story. So how do I follow standard practices in order to efficiently pitch other members of the press while also respecting the exclusivity I’d like to offer to TechCrunch?
I’ve worked with embargoed releases for decades. The “standard” practice is to ask the editors not to publish the information before X and hope they agree. Some organizations, most notably Bloomberg, have historically ignored all embargo dates. The only option is to simply refrain from giving those editors any advance information.
In your case, you might offer TechCrunch all the advance information they need with an agreement to release the information to other editors on the day TechCrunch publishes. However, don’t be surprised if the other editors aren’t very cooperative when they see you giving their rival advance information.
You just say it’s embargoed, and depend on the integrity of the journalism profession to honor it.
I imagine that it’s easier to enforce an embargo if you can deny further access to those who violate the embargo. So someone like the OP who is new to the business is going to have less leverage than someone who regularly publishes new and interesting releases.
Yes. It is hard enough to get outlets to run with press releases when there are no caveats. Unless your friend has some super-novel, game-changing product, I believe most places would honor the embargo by simply adding the release to their circular file.
The standard way to embargo information is to send out a release and indicate that it is embargoed, e.g., “For Release” or “Embargoed Until” X date and time. In your case, however, since you want to give someone an exclusive, that would be considered improper, and the news media would regret following your embargo, which isn’t the way you want to start out. You probably should just give TechCrunch its exclusive, following it up with an official press release. Then the news organizations that still want to write about you can do so, using the press release rather than the TechCrunch article as their source.
If you are a big enough player, media will respect the req not to publish early, but bets are off if you are not - why would they? What is in it for them to follow your request? If the only reward is allowing TechCrunch to scoop them, I suggest you follow the direction above. Let the first article come out and hopefully it’s a good enough product that they’ll still want to cover it.
You’re going to piss somebody off and make problems for yourself if you do this. Exclusive means exclusive, and this screws the reporter who has agreed to cover your company. You have two options here: can send out your press release after the first story is published, or send the embargoed press release to lots of people at the same time.
I think the modern equivalent is hitting the delete key.
Professional courtesy.
The adjustment I’d make on this is ask the editors if they’ll keep to an embargo and if they WON’T confirm this, you don’t send it to them.
My general preference is to give the journalist a very good reason why you’re sending him information he’s not allowed to use.
But actually to the OP, it sounds like you’re describing the difference between an advance and an exclusive. An advance is giving it to a certain outlet first, and an exclusive is only offering it to a single outlet. Both are fairly common practices.