By Kevin Foley, CEO, KEF Media
The ignominious fate of the once high-flying Medialink was a long time in the making but in my opinion, it was always inevitable. Some have speculated the company’s decline was due to adverse economic conditions, overzealous government regulators, or a reach that exceeded its grasp.
While all of these factors may have played a role, none of them completely explains how a company whose shares once traded in the high twenties fell to just pennies by the beginning of 2009.
I started my company in April of 1986 after a career in account management at two major PR firms. Medialink began its operations a month or two later. I followed Medialink’s growth closely over the years, so I believe I can speak with some authority on why Medialink was recently sold to The NewsMarket at a fire sale price.
In late 1986 I was approached by Medialink sales representatives who wanted us to use their notification and distribution services. Medialink’s sales pitch was compelling and impressive but I thought it was also flawed, so we passed.
Medialink’s business model was all about volume, its goal to crank out as many video news releases and related content as possible, regardless of news value. To the extent any media pitching and placement was performed, it would happen en masse; that is, almost every VNR Medialink offered on a given day would be bundled together and presented to the media. It was up to the producers to weed through the disparate content.
As most all PR executives know, the information we offer the media must always be actively advocated by media relations professionals. You have to develop a rapport with television, radio and Internet decision makers and earn their trust. You do this by offering content that is useful, informative and newsworthy. You speak the language of the newsroom, not PR. While there have been considerable changes in our industry since 1986, fundamental media relations practices have never changed.
If done correctly, your client benefits. If it’s done incorrectly, your client is ignored. And if you base your business on volume, there is simply no way to effectively pitch much less place huge batches of content. All you can do is blast it up against the wall and hope some sticks.
Nevertheless, this volume-based approach enabled Medialink to become the largest company in our industry in a matter of a few years. By being the largest, it was presumed by many that Medialink must also be the best. This perception was aggressively promoted by Medialink and helped accelerate its growth. Soon, it went public and its operations stretched around the globe, but its basic approach to media relations never changed.
Ours was and remains an entirely different business model. We knew you couldn’t simply convert a press release with all its self-serving language and promotional imagery into content a news producer would use. We never had a “one-size-fits-all” mentality when it came to media relations either. We carefully examined each assignment and offered counsel on what we thought would be the best means of achieving the client’s communications objectives.
It took awhile, but we began hearing from more and more disgruntled Medialink clients unhappy with the way the company handled their content and the attendant lack of results. In addition, we often broadcast producers complained that Medialink was bombarding them with useless content.
We also saw Medialink’s results reports, which were supposed to detail where, when and how Medialink’s content aired. Ideally, these reports detail a large number of airings. Most of the Medialink reports we saw didn’t. VNRs, B-roll and other projects that failed to deliver the expected results became known within Medialink as “air balls.”
There must have been a lot of air balls because, when your goal is to churn out as much content as possible, providing clients thoughtful production counsel and effective media relations services isn’t cost effective.
If you think about this volume approach, it works only if there are an infinite number of clients. Unfortunately, the universe of PR clients is finite. More important, in the relatively small public relations industry, reputations are earned for better or for worse.
We and others in the industry stuck to our guns through all of this, continuing to focus on best practices, especially where media relations was concerned. We built contacts and relationships with media professionals based on trust. This approach helped us develop long term client relationships, also based on trust. While our revenues never approached those of Medialink’s, we’re still here, the tortoise to Medialink’s hare.
When The NewsMarket announced it was buying what remained of Medialink, I wasn’t surprised. For me, it was déjà vu all over again.
Like the old Medialink, The NewsMarket is a volume-based business with a compelling proposition: Many thousands of journalists around the world have access to your video, audio and other content via The NewsMarket Internet platform.
Access is the key word here. It’s the one Medialink used in the old days. It implies that journalists are waiting at their desks for your content. Just push it out there and you’ll see the results you and your clients are looking for. Of course, media today have virtually unlimited information resources so simply posting any and all content on a web site isn’t enough.
The NewsMarket is also planning to make Medialink its content production arm, according to a sales video it is circulating. This mirrors something Medialink did nearly 20 years ago. Seeing the financial opportunities it was missing on the video production end, Medialink dove into that market in the early ’90s, driving many independent content producers who’d once been its clients out of the PR space. Now it appears The NewsMarket is headed in that direction.
Like Medialink before it, The NewsMarket will no doubt contend that I just don’t understand the “new” way things are done; that creative counseling and media advocacy are quaint but superfluous practices on the high speed information super highway.
I would argue that effective advocacy is more necessary than ever if you expect your content to reach and influence your target audiences.
