Article: Blackberry Tour taps into global networks
I think this article is newsworthy, in the eyes of an editor, for a few reasons. The first is probably because there has been a lot of hype over the new Apple 3G S iPhone and, hence, there’s more attention on the cell phone market right now. The editor took the opportunity to present both phones in the single piece by running an iPhone sidebar alongside the Blackberry story. (Of interest in a PR sense is that the iPhone is the only product pictured, not the Blackberry). Anytime Blackberry or Apple make a new product announcement, it gets media play, because they are such popular products, and I think people kind of like how they are battling it out for market share. The Blackberry story fits well into the Business section because its primary target audience is business users, and this phone in particular, a “world phone,” is targeted toward business users who travel internationally. Secondly, Research in Motion (the maker of the Blackberry) is one of Canada’s most famous companies, so new product announcements from them will usually be of interest to business section editors. Finally, although this may be incidental to the business-section angle, RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie has been all over the news lately with his bid to buy an NHL team, and therefore he is top of mind with the public.
I did not find the RIM press release on newswire.ca, nor prnewswire.com, but I did find it on the RIM site, in their virtual newsroom. The story came from the Reuters News Agency, so it was probably sent directly to them via RIM’s communications department.
-KB
I just signed up for an online course in PR through Humber College, here in Toronto, Ontario. I thought it would be a good idea to spruce up my “official” PR knowledge and bolster the things I’ve learned over the past five years. (And better understand — or even produce — charts like this one.) I’ve never done an online course before, and the price was right ($229), so I thought it would be interesting. It is, but there are lots of things about it that were a bit unexpected. For one, the infrastructure that supports it is kind of weird, in a late-90s Internet experience kind of way: chat rooms, bulletin boards, all the stuff I used to use when I first got into Internet communities. Second, it feels weird to simulate the class experience online, when there really is no class. I guess that, as a freelancer, I’m so used to working at home, alone, and setting my own deadlines that the idea of trying to create a community around the experience is a bit strange. Thirdly, the lack of direct instruction — when they’re trying so hard to create a class feel — seems a bit off. But I hope that when I come out of it, I’ll have a good understanding of how to structure a PR campaign and, more importantly, will have a stable of cool business-style catch phrases to throw at people in meetings and interviews: “I think that idea fits really well into the encoder-receiver matrix” or something like that, haha.